David Coulthard has been at McLaren for eight years now, and a distant runner-up spot last season is his best result up to date in a Formula One World Championship that continues to elude him. In 2002 he has too fail to achieve his main goal since he joined Grand Prix racing. But with a new McLaren deal and revived hopes for next season, Coulthard is confident he will finally be able to win the coveted title. Will Gray talked to the Scot about his chances for the future

David Coulthard could afford a widened smile after last weekend's German Grand Prix despite finishing a disappointing fifth at Hockenheim, because he left with a new focus as he celebrated his long-term goal of an increased salary contract with McLaren-Mercedes for 2003.

Now 31, Scot Coulthard has been with the team eight years since joining up with Mika Hakkinen in 1996 after one full season with Williams-Renault. And with his old rival, an admitted favourite of team chief Ron Dennis, now firmly out of the team's mind after announcing his retirement by video at Hockenheim, Coulthard is ready to grasp the reigns and make them his own once and for all.

Coulthard became designated team leader this season after six years as understudy to Hakkinen, but he struggled to show the required qualities as the team got off to a delayed start. They were not as quick out of the box as they had expected, and Coulthard did not seem to be able to offer the guidance to turn things around.

But he is now beginning to provide the right strategy, and the team have showed their confidence in him by providing him with a deal which, although he would not reveal details of the contract, has "long-term options". He has already declared himself a Championship contender again, despite Ferrari and Michael Schumacher's dominance, but anyone with their feet on the ground will admit there is a long way to go.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever," he said in Germany of his ability to win the title. "I feel good for the future. I have made it quite clear in the past that this is where I should be to give me the best chance of winning. I think that some people sign contracts and don't honestly believe that it is going to make them World Champion - but I believe I have the potential here and I have the capability of doing that in the right set of circumstances."

Coulthard has scored 32 points in the 12 races so far this year, and although that places him in fifth place and still solidly in the battle for runners-up spot, Schumacher has wracked-up more than three times as many in the same number of races.

But, somehow, Coulthard still believes the under-achieving McLaren team and their engine partners Mercedes-Benz can turn things around in time for next season and force the all-conquering German destroyer and his Italian Ferrari team to fight long and hard to claim a record sixth world title in 2003.

"This is the least competitive we have been since 1997, but we are still relatively close and we know that with a little bit extra in certain areas we will be in a competitive situation," said Coulthard in Germany. "There is only ourselves and Williams in that situation at the moment.

"It is difficult to imagine anyone else breaking into that position because Michael has clearly got a car advantage and although I know there are many doubters out there - and lots of people think that Michael in a competitive car is always going to be difficult to beat - we have beaten him and he can be beaten again."

Coulthard won in Monaco this year, and that fact proved the Adrian Newey-designed McLaren chassis is, perhaps, one of Ferrari's strongest competitors out there. The thing that is currently letting them down is the powerplant from Mercedes-Benz, and they are working on steps to improve that.

But McLaren's decision to keep the ageing Scot as partner to young sensation Kimi Raikkonen - who, it must not be overlooked, only completed his half-century of single-seater car races at the British Grand Prix this year - seems simply to offer the Finn his great wealth of experience.

Coulthard seems to have shown little this season that could convince the bosses he is their best shot at a world title, having been outqualified by Raikkonen in eight of the 12 races so far this season, starting from ninth on the grid in the last race at Hockenheim as opposed to Raikkonen's fifth - the biggest grid gap between the two so far. Such statistics do not bode favourably for DC.

Nicknamed 'the iceman' by insiders at McLaren, Raikkonen says little to the media but performs best out on the track. It is hard to get more than ten words out of the Finn, whether he is speaking in English or Finnish, but his lack of off-track personality only enhances his on-track concentration.

Coulthard's relaxed demeanour is great for grabbing headlines with cracking one-liners - like his Magny-Cours retort, when he claimed he would declare himself the new Messiah if he was able to miracle up a victory. The comment raised a smile among journalists in the paddock, but it was Raikkonen's race performance that brought grins to the team in the garage, as he almost achieved what Coulthard had claimed near impossible.

But for oil on the track, Raikkonen would have won his first Grand Prix in France. In fact, but for mechanical failures from the team, which have stopped him in his tracks on no less than five occasions this year, the youngster would, quite possibly, be with Coulthard in that mix zone for the prized runners-up spot, fighting Juan Pablo Montoya, Ralf Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello to the best prize left.

Perhaps, then, Hakkinen's confirmed departure is not such good news for Coulthard after all. "There is always more than just Mika that stands in the way of a World Championship," admitted Coulthard when asked if his old teammate's decision to retire would help him in his quest for glory with McLaren.

Without even alluding to his latest teammate, Coulthard admitted, in an accidental but actually very clear manner, just why he seemed to have stepped up his game in last year's Championship. Then, he actually achieved that runners-up spot, but, in fact, he seemed to address his improvements by singling out Hakkinen's deficiencies.

"I think that Mika already last year was starting to change as a driver," Coulthard said. "He clearly wasn't able or wasn't prepared to hang it out as much as he had done when the package was really working well for him. That's one obvious thing you can put forward between him and Michael, that even when Michael hasn't had competitive cars he has always given 100 percent. Naturally I am disappointed that I will never get the chance to have a real race at him (Mika) in equal circumstances.

"All we will have is what was left from the time that we were together and he definitely had the upper hand psychologically and he was at the top of his game when we had a competitive car. But that part of our careers is finished, we are on to the next part - and I'm still here, still hungry." And the statistics, actually, show Coulthard has every right to be.

Although Hakkinen won two Championships with McLaren and scored 403 points in his eight full seasons at the Woking-based team, Coulthard's points average is actually quite comparable, with 49.3 points per season compared to Hakkinen's 50.3 average.

Hakkinen's first full season in the team, however, was in 1994 when he suffered with a disappointing Peugeot engine, while he also had to endure a difficult first season with Mercedes before the partnership really got going by the time Coulthard joined in 1996.

But comparing the performance of the pair in a competitive car, from 1996 to the end of last year, when Hakkinen threw in the towel, there is little difference with the Finn claiming an average of 45 points per year and Coulthard just five points down.

With stats like that, Coulthard is not ready to lay down his sword and end the fight. In fact, he says, he cannot imagine being in Hakkinen's position of playing happy families and wanting to give up the dream to live the life away from the track - even though it is a dangerous business.

"I really cannot imagine what it is like to say I don't want to race," Coulthard said. "I am aware of the risks, always have been, but I love what I do and I am not ready to eliminate those risks from my life and live another life, unfulfilled in my racing career. There is still the hunger and desire to go out there, and there is certainly the will to win."

Neither could he consider racing in anything other than a silver car wearing the silver overalls of McLaren. "The only positive there can be with moving to another team is that short honeymoon period of 'everybody's great'," he explained. "You are great because you are new and exciting and you bring new information, they are great because you don't know who the wankers are and who the good people are. The reality is when it comes to the guts of the work and getting down to do the job, to know the people is beneficial."

Coulthard began the season confident "his people" had done the job and provided him with a competitive challenger to take on the mighty Schumacher and lead the team to victory. And he made certain everyone knew he was ready for a fight. Speaking to the British media in a Barcelona nightclub as McLaren's launch party got into full swing, Coulthard came out of his winter corner as a growling tiger, ready to fight wheel-to-wheel for the title.

The rugged MP4-17, first driven by him on the cold January day following the team's Barcelona beach party, was a strong car which could withstand a few bumps and he was ready to give as good as the notorious Schumacher could give to win races. In the end, however, he could not get anywhere near his German rival and has been left fighting for the scraps as the unstoppable Schumacher success machine bulldozers through the record books rewriting history in every race.

"I was confident that we were in good shape because I know it is a better car than last year's car," he said, explaining his early-season confidence in retrospect after signing the new deal during which he believes the team will turn the corner.

"One of the things we weren't aware of before the start of the season is that Williams just don't perform until qualifying and then lose it in the race. All through winter testing you can only use a reference and that is where we were misguided. The others around us gave us a false reading.

"There was real frustration earlier in the season, but now I have seen the progression. We have seen the two issues, one of which we don't talk about and the other one we have been learning about Michelin and going through that development phase and it is encouraging."

There is a long way to go, Coulthard admits, but he is here because he knows things in Formula One, particularly at a team like McLaren, can turn around almost in an instant. The sights are on, the concentration is strong and his focus is the title again. Coulthard and McLaren, he believes, are on the way back.

"It is not like everyone's sitting there and having a wee group hug," he said. "We are not all getting fat and lazy. We are hungry for success - and it is situations like that re-focuses the mind."