David Coulthard

David Coulthard was born on 27 March 1971 in Scotland into a family connected to motorsport. He visited Macao for the first time in 1991, and it was also his first experience on a street circuit. The second position in qualifying had earned himself a place on the front row alongside pole position Swedish driver Rickard Rydell. 

Rydell got away at the start of the first heat, leading over the opening lap, before Coulthard found a way past on the long run down to Lisboa Bend. Once he was in the lead, there was no looking back and Coulthard finished the first leg with a 10-second gap to Jordi Gené, who had also managed to get past Rydell. Coulthard’s victory in the first leg gave him pole position for the second race, he was quick to get away at the start and build up a small margin over Gené. However, Spanish driver Gené fought back and began closing in on Coulthard, eventually got himself right into Coulthard’s slipstream and dived around the outside of Coulthard into Lisboa Bend. Coulthard had a look at retaking the position at San Francisco Bend but decided it was not worth the risk. At that time the race was run on the aggregate result over two legs, because his margin of victory in the first leg was so great, Coulthard would still take overall victory even if he didn’t win the second.

This Ralt RT35 was driven by Coulthard to win the 9^th Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix in the 38^th Macau Grand Prix.

The Ralt RT35 was built for the 1991 Formula 3 season, and continued the evolution of previous Ralt chassis. It boasted twin side-mounted water radiators, making it the first Ralt with symmetrical sidepods since the RT3/84 from the 1984 season. To make the chassis stiffer, Ralt used a new method to bond the aluminium honeycomb sandwich in the tub and this had a safety effect as well as it reduced the chances of the car peeling bodywork away in the event of an accident. To make the car sleeker and faster, the RT35 had a reprofiled front end and a new rear underbody deflector was introduced.

On the 20^th anniversary of his 1991 win, Coulthard recalled the challenge of the Guia Circuit: “The track was definitely a challenge though because there are so many different types of corners all around there. I remember the last section quite tricky particularly because it is open and you carry a lot of speed, and have to commit a lot of speed to the entries. The difficult thing on the street circuit is that if you do commit too much speed, there is only one way it is going to go if you get it wrong – which is wide and in the barriers.”