For the Formula One fanatics present at the Bandra Promenade to see David Coulthard zipping down the Sea Link and perform burn outs, it was over
in a flash.
The Scot could manage only one lap and a couple of 360 degree spins before his Red Bull car engine stalled. Mumbai’s first-ever Formula One road show lasted only for a short while but it was worth every second.
An apologetic Coulthard later said he perhaps got a little too excited.
“I got excited and over heated the engine. This road show was little bit short. I would have liked to do a lot more demonstrations for all the people who had come here today,” he said.
“But that’s Formula One. These cars are fragile animals and they are designed for the race tracks and sometimes it is difficult to put them on open roads. But that said it’s been a pleasure to be here for the last three days. I will take back some good memories with me,” he added.
Tony Burrows, Red Bull support team manager admitted that Coulthard overdid it.
“He did too many doughnuts (360 degree spins) in a short span,” Burrows said. “The ideal thing would have been to space it. But he got too excited.”
So once the engine temperature of Coulthard’s car touched 150 degrees Celsius (Formula One car engine is designed to stall when it reaches a certain temperature so that it doesn’t go up in flames) the engine stalled and that was the end of it. The engineers could have restarted the car but they had very little time as the Sea Link had to be thrown open for traffic.
Coulthard, who had joked about going flat out not adhering to the speed limits as he didn’t intend to drive in Mumbai again, did keep his promise.
In his one lap on the Sea Link, Coulthard touched 260 kmph which was impressive considering the fact that it was close to race speeds on some of the regular Formula One circuits. He covered the 4.7 km Sea Link back and forth in three minutes. Just to put it in perspective, a passenger car would have taken close to seven minutes to go just one way at the current speed limit of 50 kmph.
Initially the Scot didn’t know what speed he had touched but when the engineers told him it was 260 kmph, he smiled and stated, “I didn’t intend to go fast. It just happened.”
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