Coulthard: The team can't understand what a driver feels.

      Former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard is unhappy that McLaren is intervening in the battle between its drivers. The Scot believes the team is manipulating the results, and that is unacceptable...

      David Coulthard: "As a driver, as someone who grew up with racing since childhood, I want to see wheel-to-wheel battles. And yes, sometimes engines blow up, or something else happens. But when the team intervenes in this way, it manipulates the results, and I don't like it. Yes, it's within the rules, and McLaren has the right to do it. But this year they'll win the Constructors' Championship and the drivers' title anyway — why intervene? Let it all be decided by the drivers' battles on the track.

      The team can't understand what a driver feels. As a driver, you want to win by fighting for the result, not by being handed it. That's what we've been racing for since we were very young. But sometimes it seems to me that the brilliant engineers, the brilliant managers, the people who make all this possible for the drivers, don't fully understand how passionate the drivers are about what they do — it's their life.

      Those who make the decisions — they haven't sat in that car, haven't sweated, haven't felt the pain. They haven't endured such suffering. When the race engineer says, 'You must do this for your teammate' — it's unpleasant. It hurts a lot."