Of all the paths that David Coulthard had envisaged travelling into Formula One, never once did he get close to foreseeing the one that ended up leading him to the most prestigious, glamorous and lauded discipline in motorsport.
Aged 23, Coulthard became a Formula One driver as a direct result of a fatal crash for one of the greatest drivers ever to sit behind the wheel of an F1 car.
The death of Ayrton Senna, during the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, led to Coulthard, who learnt his trade in karting and Formula 3000, fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming an F1 driver.
And even thirty-one years on from that most horrific of crashes in Imola, Coulthard remains deeply affected by how his entry into F1 came about.
"I grew up watching Ayrton Senna in the 80s and early 90s and then I came through to become a test driver for Nigel Mansell, then for Alain Prost and, in ’94, test driver for Senna. And then three races into his Williams career, he's dead,” Coulthard recalls.
“It was just unbelievable to think that the best driver of that era could be killed and it did make me think what chance did the rest of us have?
“So Ayrton's dead and two weeks later, I'm in the car in Barcelona as a grand prix driver. It was a horrible, horrible way to start my F1 career.
“I couldn't match Senna but what I could do, in his honour, was give 100 percent and that's what I took through my following 14 seasons in the sport - to always strive to do the very best I could.”
Coulthard’s best was, by anyone’s standards, an exceptional driver.
He may never have got his hands on a world championship title - the closest he came was second in the Drivers’ Championship in 2001 - but a 15-year F1 career and 13 grand prix wins points to a supremely gifted individual.
As successful as his driving career was, the majority of which was spent at McLaren, it didn’t come easily, nor immediately to Coulthard.
The victories and high points were interspersed with disappointments, failures and controversies.
It’s these ups and downs that the Scot will be delving into during his week-long “An Evening With” tour, which he’ll embark upon later this month alongside his long-time teammate, rival and, now, good friend, Mika Häkkinen.
Coulthard and Häkkinen will visit Glasgow then Edinburgh for their two Scottish dates of the tour on the 24th and 25th of September and they will, hopes Coulthard, be entertaining, insightful and potentially provocative evenings.
“Even after retirement Mika and my paths have continued to cross - as drivers, we went through the whole range of emotions but now, Mika and I just enjoy hanging out together,” says Coulthard, whose eventful life also includes a near-death place crash.
“We often agree to disagree on many things and Mika is very funny so the tour will hopefully be very entertaining and a lot of fun.
“We all have our different journeys towards becoming competitors in this sport - Mika has his own journey starting with a humble background then being nurtured by James Hunt. And Mika came much closer to dying than I ever did when he crashed in ’95 in Adelaide.
“And then there’s everything that went on in my career too so there’s plenty to talk about.”
Coulthard, who is now 54 years old and based in Monaco, was born and brought up in Twynholm in Kirkcudbrightshire and while it was close to an idyllic childhood, it was, in fact, this low-key, sheltered upbringing that proved to be a significant drawback for the Scot when he entered the dog-eat-dog world of F1 in the early 1990s.
“The brilliance of growing up in the south-west of Scotland also throws up limitations because when I entered F1, I wasn't street smart. As a kid, I didn't have to look left and right to cross the road because there were no cars on the road and then I entered a world that Eddie Jordan called the Piranha Club, so it was quite a change,” says Coulthard.
“For the 20 drivers who are on the grid there, there's another 200 drivers who want their job so it's a brutal eat or be eaten environment and it took me a while to really get my elbows out.
“I was probably about 28 or 29 years old before I felt really comfortable within myself because prior to that I was surrounded by people who seemed far more worldly, more capable, more educated about the world than me.“I don't have regrets in terms of I wish I hadn't crashed here or done this there because that happens to everyone. These things happen in F1 but the luxury of being from south-west of Scotland was also a limitation in the early days, until I developed more street smarts.”
Once Coulthard became what he describes as “worldly”, it soon became apparent that he could compete, and beat, the very best on the planet.
Particular highlights include a brace of victories at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1999 and 2000 and while the Scot, on his day, was as good, if not better, than any driver on the grid, he admits he was lacking that certain quality that makes an individual truly great.
“I went toe-to-toe with the best drivers of my era and sometimes I was able to beat them. But the truly great drivers have whatever it is that makes them really elite. Others who have it are people like Rory McIlroy, the Williams sisters or Sir Chris Hoy. These people just have something that allows them to get that extra one percent.
“I could tap into that occasionally but I didn't have the consistency because I didn't actually know what it was to be able to do it every time I raced where they were able to.”
Coulthard’s career is pockmarked with numerous memorable moments. His rivalry with his McClaren teammate, Häkkinen, was fierce but it’s perhaps a certain crash with Michael Schumacher in Spa in 1998 that really sticks in Coulthard's mind all these years later.
“Of course there's the headline moments in my career that most people who are interested in F1 from that time will know about. There’s the victories in Monaco, Silverstone and places like that then there’s when I caused one of the biggest crashes in Formula 1. It was lap 25 on the first corner in Spa - I tried to blame Eddie Irvine for what happened - but I crashed with Michael Schumacher and he then came into our garage to ask me if I'd like to engage in what you might call a small boxing match.”
Coulthard remains a keen observer of the sport and is now a commentator and presenter for Channel 4’s F1 coverage.
With McLaren certain to win the drivers championship this season, all that remains to be answered is which driver will prevail.
As things stand, Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris at the top of the drivers' championship and Coulthard admits he’s watching with interest how the remainder of the season pans out and when, not if, the rivalry boils over into animosity, which is a scenario with which the Scot can identify following his own rivalry with Häkkinen.
“McLaren currently has two brilliant drivers and one of them is going to be the world champion at the end of this season,” Coulthard says.
“The team is trying to keep everything on an even keel but there will, like we saw in Canada, be incidents of the drivers crashing together and there will be moments of tension that will be very difficult to manage because it really matters which one of these two guys wins.
“So McLaren is trying to delay the inevitable and they will have a strategy for what to do when the inevitable bust-up happens. If these guys remain close in the standings as we get closer to someone being crowned world champion, it will be very difficult to manage.
“So many different things happen behind the scenes in F1 and that was the same in my career.
“Winning or losing is everything to you at the time so Mika and I can now laugh about everything that went on but at the time, we were definitely not laughing.”
"An Evening with Racing Icons Mika Häkkinen & David Coulthard" comes to the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on the 24th September and the Usher Hall in Edinburgh on the 25th September
