DC's Beeping Qualy...

By John Sharpe
April 3 2005

What in the “$&&%” (beep) really happened to David Coulthard during Saturday qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix? While most teams still utilize shift lights on the steering wheel to indicate when to change gears, Red Bull Racing employs an audible “beep”

that signals to the driver via his radio just when the next gearshift is needed.
David was misquoted as saying that he was having trouble “not receiving the lights” to signal his gear changes.

As DC began his flying qualifying lap, he had inadvertently left his radio channel open during his out lap – according to RBR, this cancelled out the “beeps” David would have heard to assist in gear changing.

“I couldn’t hear my shift beeps and I didn’t know the radio was on,” David was quoted as saying.

“It cancelled the audio that tells me when to change gear, so I had to go back to using the shift lights.
Because it’s never happened to me before I didn’t know that I had the radio on. It meant that I started the lap and I ran into the limiter on a couple of shifts, until I realized that I had a problem with that.”

Though he struggled with the cars balance and was not satisfied with its set up, David was still able to salvage what could have been a more disastrous first qualifying session.