Champions Race: Coulthard and Team Nordic take victory

Romain Grosjean had won the last Race of Champions held in Bangkok in 2012, and the Frenchman was present in Barbados to defend his title. But he was quickly eliminated and saw a former F1 driver claim the title: David Coulthard.

The Scottish driver beat Mercedes AMG F1 team’s reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein in the final to claim victory. He was delighted with this win: “We had a fantastic week, uh no, a fantastic race weekend. So a big thank you to all the wonderful people of Barbados for coming – and of course to Fredrik Johnsson and his ROC team. I’m retired so it’s great to have a new trophy. But I think everyone can see that with Pascal, we have a star in the making.”

Wehrlein had a lot of fun and is not too disappointed about failing in the final: « It was a pleasure for me to be here and to drive in the Race of Champions. It was so much fun, but in the end, David was very good. I couldn’t beat him – maybe because it’s a bit hard for me to drive a car with a manual gearbox, a clutch, and all that. But David was unbeatable, so my congratulations to him. Reaching the final and losing against him isn’t so bad for my first year. »

On the team race side, specifically by nations, it was Team Nordic – consisting of Tom Kristensen (Danish) and Petter Solberg (Norwegian) – that emerged victorious by defeating Team Scotland – composed of David Coulthard and Susie Wolff – in the final.

In the semi-finals, Team Nordic defeated Team France, which was composed of the two Lotus drivers, Romain Grosjean and Esteban Ocon, while Team Scotland eliminated Team Barbados in the semi-finals. Team Nordic thus succeeds Team Germany, which had achieved 6 consecutive victories with the Vettel/Schumacher duo. The drivers also paid tribute to the seven-time German world champion, who is still recovering from his skiing accident almost a year ago, by displaying a banner in support of the Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord Research (ICM).