Schumacher: Coulthard still a threat

13 April 2012

Michael Schumacher is refusing to write off David Coulthard as a title threat despite opening up his biggest advantage over the Scot in their championship battle.  

The Ferrari driver leads Coulthard by 18 points with the 17-race season almost half-over after his McLaren rival failed to finish a race for the first time this year in Canada.

Schumacher believes Coulthard is still the only man with a realistic chance of preventing him from successfully defending his drivers' crown even though he was beaten into second place by his brother Ralf in Montreal.

"We still have nine races to go, many points to be given, so I am not comfortable at all," said the German.

"There is still far too long to go in the championship for it to be over.

"Even though I am roughly 30 points ahead of Ralf it still can mean that he is able to win the championship, although I believe that the main rivalry is between David and myself."

Schumacher, who tested in Silverstone last week ahead of next month's British Grand Prix, believes Coulthard has been 'lucky' so far this season in going until the eighth race before failing to score when his Mercedes engine blew-up.

"You have to live with that, its part of racing and I would not call it frustrating," added the triple champion of Coulthard's set-back.

"It goes around and comes around. One day you suffer, the next day suffers another one.

"David has been in that perspective lucky this year as he has always been in the points, not having a single failure so far. He had the start problems twice, but no points was the first time and that's pretty unusual."

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