May 30 , 2004

David Coulthard involved in an accident, Kimi Räikkönen retires with pneumatic failure The West McLaren Mercedes drivers David Coulthard and Kimi Räikkönen both retired from the Monaco Grand Prix. On the third lap David's car was hit by Giancarlo Fisichella's Sauber Petronas as he attempted to avoid crashing into Takuma Sato's BAR-Honda which was enveloped in a cloud of smoke as the result of an engine failure. Kimi retired on lap 28 due to a failure of the engine's pneumatic system. Jarno Trulli (Renault) won the 77-lap race.

MP4-19 03: David MP4-19 04: Kimi

The start: Kimi started the race from fifth position on the grid and immediately moved ahead of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari which was one ahead of him, but both of them were overtaken by Takuma Sato's BAR-Honda going into the first corner. At the end of the opening lap Kimi was holding fifth position. David started from eighth place on the grid and held this same position at the end of the first lap.

The race: On the third lap Sato retired just before the swimming pool and the smoke from his car covered the whole race track. Several cars had to brake hard and at this moment Fisichella crashed into the back of David's car and turned over. David came into the pits with his damaged car missing its rear wing. It was not possible to repair the car so he had to retire.

After this incident Kimi was holding fourth position. Following the first pit stop of Jenson Button's BAR-Honda on lap 18, Kimi moved into third place and also came in for his first routine stop one lap later (10.0sec). Kimi resumed the race in seventh place and on lap 20 moved through to sixth. Three laps later he was up to fifth. On lap 28 Kimi came into the pits due to a problem with the pneumatic system and retired from the race.

Comments

Kimi Räikkönen: "The engineers could see that there was a problem with the engine's pneumatic system and the team told me to come in and retire. I think we could have done well here today. Obviously I'm disappointed as we have had a good and reasonably competitive weekend until today. There was a lot of smoke when Sato's engine blew up, but I was prepared as it had been smoking for some time and managed to find my way through."

David Coulthard: "I'm really disappointed and upset as I love this race and would have enjoyed battling it out with the other guys. Obviously I was very worried when Fisichella flew over me and his car landed upside down, and we were lucky not to have a more serious accident. When Sato's engine blew up I couldn't see anything in front of me because of the smoke, so perhaps Fisichella was going a bit too fast but I don't know. However smoke was coming from Sato's car already on the Parade Lap so I'm sure the engineers could have seen on the telemetry that eventually the engine would blow up."

Ron Dennis, Team Principal: "A great race for Formula One, but a disappointing weekend for the team as a whole and especially the drivers who were able to enjoy a more competitive performance in qualifying. David's race was abruptly stopped by Fisichella. We took the difficult decision to retire Kimi from the race when it became apparent that a pneumatic control system on the engine was malfunctioning, which would have caused the engine to fail. All in all not a great weekend, but we will work hard at maintaining our progress towards competitiveness."

Norbert Haug, Vice-President Mercedes-Benz Motorsport: "David's race was over when Fisichella ran into him following David taking avoiding action after Sato's BAR slowed down. The team decided to stop Kimi because the telemetry indicated a failure in the pneumatic system - the reason for which we still have to investigate. A bad result for a Monaco weekend that had begun better than the five races before and showed some progress in our competitiveness."