Fabian Coulthard: Slowing down under safety car was a team order

Fabian Coulthard has said he’s been abused online after holding up the field under safety car in the closing stages of the Bathurst 1000.

The DJR Team Penske driver was running third on the road when a safety car was deployed late in the race just before the critical lap number, sitting only behind race leader Jamie Whincup (Triple Eight Race Engineering) and his team-mate Scott McLaughlin.

Knowing they would have to stack Coulthard and that McLaughlin would lose time to van Gisbergen behind him, who had taken a splash of fuel under the last safety car, DJRTP instructed Kiwi to slow down to minimise the damage.

While the #12 driver is being tormented on social media for the tactic, he insists it was a team directive and he followed orders.

“I’m probably more pissed off with how I’m getting smashed on social media by various people,” Coulthard said to TouringCarTimes.

“It was a directive from the team to slow up, take extreme caution; I did what I was told and I’m getting absolutely abused for it which I don’t think is fair.”

When asked about how he felt having to stack behind McLaughlin all day, Coulthard said it was something which the whole field has to deal with.

“That’s Supercars; there’s only one pit boom. It’s been like this for years and it’s probably going to remain that way. The team protocol is whoever is ahead on the road gets priority and Scotty was ahead on the road.”

Coulthard was enjoying a good day after qualifying in 16th on Friday in the wet, going fastest in the morning warm-up before getting up to the top three in the race with the help of co-driver Tony D’Alberto.

TouringCarTimes asked Coulthard to give a report card on his day regardless of the late race incident, with the eventual sixth place finisher saying the team did a good job to get the car into leading contention.

“As a group for car #12, we did a good job; we clawed our way back from not a great qualifying session,” he said.

“We were in second there at one point so I think as a group we should be pretty happy with our performance.

“It’s been good all week, it’s been fast enough, we just need to harness that and take it with us to the Gold Coast. The morning warm-up was good, the car was fast and Tony did a good job.

“The car was predictable, you knew what you had every time you turned into each corner and we did good things with it.”

Coulthard is third in the Supercars championship standings, 787 points adrift of McLaughlin while DJR Team Penske enjoys a 843 point lead over Triple Eight in the team’s championship standings.