Last updated at 09:23 26 August 2007

When his private jet crashed in France, David Coulthard calmly walked away from the carnage that left two dead.

In this shocking extract from his new autobiography, the Formula One ace reveals how he survived the tragedy and why he thought he'd never live past 30.

David Coulthard has scored more points in Formula One than any other Brit – he's our most successful F1 driver. He made his F1 debut with Williams at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1994, replacing the late Ayrton Senna. In 1996, he joined McLaren and stayed with the team for nine seasons before joining Red Bull.

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In May 2000, he was flying en route to Nice with his then girlfriend and personal trainer when disaster struck. Here, he recalls that harrowing day:

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'Staring ahead of me into the Lear's cockpit I saw a light flashing.

I knew straight away that an engine must have failed.

One had, on the left side. I wasn't in any form of panic though, because there was no logical reason to be; we still had another engine.

It might sound strange that I wasn't anxious but I didn't think there was any need to be and I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

I was accustomed to chartering small aircraft to travel to and from my home in Monaco.

I've flown a little bit and I have a basic understanding of flight rules. So when, an hour into the flight from Farnborough, there was a strange noise, I recognised immediately that something was wrong.

The co-pilot told me and my American girlfriend of the time, Heidi Wichlinski, and my personal trainer, Andy Matthews, that we were going to make an emergency landing at Lyon-Satolas airport.

We started our descent and began the final approach.

When we got level with the height of the trees, I said to Andy and Heidi to calm them – a bad joke as it turned out – 'Hey, we're only about 50ft up, so even if we crash we'll be fine.'

Within a few seconds of the words coming out of my mouth, the plane was ploughing into the ground and grinding to a halt, a mangled wreck.

We had started to land at 12.38pm.

Only 26 seconds later we had crashed and the pilot and the co-pilot were both killed.

The pilot had come in too low and too slow, which is a dangerous combination.

The plane's wing tip hit the ground as we swerved to the left.

This rammed the nose into the ground – with the cockpit and the two pilots taking the full force of the impact.

I could see that the front had been ripped off the fuselage. It was like a road car with the bonnet completely gone.

The body of one of the pilots was actually found under the aircraft.

I don't remember any noise at all.

I also don't remember seeing anything during the crash itself. Heidi was trying to open the emergency door next to her, above the wing. I could see there was a fire right outside that door, so I suggested we all go out of the front of the plane, which had a gaping hole where the nose had been severed.

Andy went out first and I went out next, so I could help Heidi down.

I handed Heidi's dog Moody to Andy, and he threw the mutt about 30ft across the grass, like a rugby ball.

Heidi was a little hysterical and Andy was wired too.

I felt quite calm and almost detached at this point.

I remember looking over my shoulder at the smouldering wreckage and thinking,

'Um, that was close. Now, how are we going to get home?'

Four days after the crash I drove for McLaren in the Spanish Grand Prix. I paid my respects to the pilots at a press conference beforehand.

It was a weird feeling talking about them. I had no relationship with them; I shook their hand when I got on the plane and that was it.

I qualified fourth and finished second in the race behind my team-mate Mika Hakkinen and ahead of a very determined Michael Schumacher.

This is a result I am very proud of.

People often ask me what the repercussions of the crash were for me.

I am being totally open and honest by saying that, if there were any, I don't remember them.

What is there to say? People died, I didn't. The real tragedy was the death of those husbands and fathers.

Could I change what happened? No. Should I let this affect my attitude to flying?

No, and besides, as a Formula One driver, I have little choice in whether I fly or not. What happened, happened. It is what it is.

I grew up being scared of the dark, with nightmares of a monster coming to

get me through the dark streets of Twynholm, the village in the Scottish borders where we lived. That scared me.

And I've had exes who have hidden behind doors and gone 'Boo!' and I hate it.

That scares me.

Maybe this sounds silly coming out of the mouth of an F1 driver.

But I've always been the sort to dip a toe in the water, then think, 'Yup, that's all right, yeah, I can do that…' before leaping in.

That has been my approach to life. So you can see, I'm not the daredevil. I hate being scared.

But racing just isn't something that frightens me.

I wouldn't do it if I was scared. My job goes hand in hand with danger – only in March I had a spectacular run in with Alexander Wurz in the Australian Grand Prix.

Before the plane crash, I'd had two significant crashes myself and it took the death of another driver, Ayrton Senna, to get me on the grid of my first F1, in Barcelona in May 1994.

By then I had been a test driver for Williams for a year.

That day, along with millions of others, I watched as Ayrton Senna fought off a brilliantly quick Michael Schumacher at the San Marino Grand Prix.

During lap seven, Senna's Williams car suddenly smashed into a wall at 190mph on the Tamburello corner. He was critically injured and later died.

The following week I was testing in Jerez and Frank Williams flew down to tell me that I would be racing with Damon Hill in Spain the next week.

Obviously the context of Senna's death made jumping up and down and cheering at the news inappropriate, even after years of racing, travelling, testing and training, but I would never do that anyway.

I simply said, 'Oh, OK Frank, thank you.'

As I finally sat ready to go out on to the track for qualifying in an F1 grand prix, the team radio hissed at me.

It was Patrick Head, co-founder of the Williams team. 'OK, David, we're not looking for anything dramatic, just take the car round, keep it off the kerbs, make sure you qualify.'

I couldn't resist. 'Thank you for that, Patrick. Remind me, when I pull out of the garage, do I turn left or right?' And, yes, I qualified...

The harsh reality of life and the business is that drivers come and drivers go.

Usually they move teams, but sometimes they are killed or seriously injured.

This was my opportunity and rather than reflecting on the loss of a great champion, I had to concentrate on my job.

If I had done it half-heartedly, that would have been very disrespectful to the late Ayrton, so I just got on with it.

A year later, in 1995, I had a big shunt while testing at Silverstone, which knocked me unconscious.

It was my first really big impact in F1.

I hit the barrier at Club Corner which, at the time, consisted of old wooden sleepers from train tracks.

My head slammed forward and smashed into the side of the chassis, which cracked the helmet and knocked me out.

One consequence of this big accident was that I phoned my mother and said to her, 'Mother, I just want you to know that if I'm ever killed in a race, there is every chance that you might be watching it on TV.

'If that is so, I don't want you to think my last moments were full of fear, or that I knew I was going to die.'

It was a struggle for her to listen to that, but I am glad I made that call.

For me the accident had been a revelation.

It made me imagine the journey to death: perhaps it was just like getting knocked out, but for eternity?

The only difference here was, I woke up.

Of course one of my most famous on-track incidents was my coming-together with Schumacher at the Belgian Grand prix in 1998.

The weather on race day was atrocious and the grand prix promised much as Ferrari were catching us.

Racing in wet weather and not being in the lead is probably the most horrible part of being a grand prix driver.

People might watch the TV and think it looks quite manageable. It is not – it is about as easy as driving blind.

Our windscreen is the visor, so that rain is obstructing your vision only a few inches from your eyes.

Also, it is incredibly hard to get the water off the visor, so you really have to drive by memory.

The day did not start well. I spun out of La Source hairpin and a massive pile-up ensued, with 12 cars involved and the track littered with debris.

We restarted and Schumacher was miles in the lead when he came up to lap me.

I had every intention of getting out of his way, so I moved to the right and lifted off the accelerator.

Unfortunately, Michael was caught unawares, apparently, and smashed into the rear of my McLaren.

My rear wing was ripped off and his Ferrari lost its nose and front right wheel. He was out of the race.

Computers later showed the relative speed of the impact was 137mph.

I still had my helmet on by my parked McLaren when I saw Michael storming into our garage.

He was clearly livid: 'You tried to f***ing kill me!'

I couldn't say anything back because my helmet was on, but he had to be restrained by his own race engineer.

It went without saying that the boost this gave my team-mate Mika Hakkinen's title push did not help my cause in the eyes of cynical observers.

A good racing driver is brave, but a great one knows how to use fear to his advantage.

Fear is an essential part of doing what we do, because fear defines a limit and if you are good at understanding the physics of what a car can sustain through a corner, for example, then you drive it more quickly than others.

To be fearless is no use – you have no limits and so you just go flat out, exceed what the car can do and therefore crash.

Yet there is a contradiction about what I am saying because I never thought I would get past the age of 30 [he's now 36].

I believed this so firmly that I never planned anything that would take place after my 30th birthday.

Then only ten months before, I was in the plane crash in France.

It changed my attitude to how I wanted to live my life. So Heidi and I got engaged.

I never actually asked Heidi to marry me. I asked her 'to engage me', a deeply unromantic notion and perhaps a sign, in retrospect, that it was all wrong.

I bought her a Cartier watch one day in London's Bond Street and while we were in there I said, casually, 'What's your style of ring?' So I also bought her a diamond ring.

She liked sparkly things.

Heidi found a place to get married in the Bahamas, scheduled for the spring of 2001.

The wedding was all paid for and arranged, but I pulled out a few months before; I just couldn't do it.

I lay in bed one day thinking that I was going to be 30 in a few months, a new grand prix season was coming up and I was supposed to be getting married, all within the same few weeks.

I just didn't feel like I could do all three at the same time and, sadly, getting married was the first to go.

Heidi was staying at my apartment in Chelsea and I was at a Mayfair hotel, but in theory it was a trial separation.

One night I was at the bar in the hotel, met a girl and started having a few drinks.

We went upstairs, more drinks were poured, a bubble bath was run and the next day, she sold the story.

Coupled with the danger of

F1 comes a desire to live life to the full. There are plenty of drivers who like to enjoy themselves in various ways that their sponsors – or partners – might not approve of.

You might think F1 is under such media scrutiny that no one ever gets up to any mischief, but that's wrong.

As for myself – I have never had a relationship with a young lady on a race weekend. All right, very rarely.

F1 attracts the attractive, so I would often end up discussing the finer points of ceramic brake technology or strategic fuel loads with a variety of young women.

Yes, in my younger days I have had the knock on the hotel door and in

steps a pleasant-looking young lady who stays for an hour or so, then leaves without me actually finding out her name.

I was never sure how these women found out my room number but, to be fair, I wasn't always that bothered.

Another time, I was at a stately home for a big society event and I went, as I often do for these very formal gatherings, in my kilt.

One of the young daughters of a certain aristocrat was chatting away with me and one thing led to another and we wandered off across a courtyard.

As we were returning to the party, we were met by the girl's mother, who was looking very stern. 'What are you two up to.'

'Er, I was just giving David a tour of the house, Mummy,' said my companion.

Her mother stepped forward, tucked her daughter's bra strap back into her dress, looked me in the eye and said, 'I see you've had the full tour.'

So I accept there is evidence to support accusations in the media that I am a ladies' man but if you scratch under the surface of some of these 'sexposés', you will see that, actually, they are seriously exaggerated.

Take the 'Coulthard's Lesbian Love Boat' story, for instance.

In 1999, I bought a yacht called Highlander and took a party around Sardinia.

Some time into the voyage, unbeknown to me, one female guest started having sex with another woman on the foredeck who was, incidentally, smeared in strawberries and daiquiri.

The paparazzi were snapping away, but I was just minding my own business, drinking some tea out of a Wallace and Gromit mug on the deck.

I spent nine years at McLaren.

The end of my tenure came in 2005 and they announced in 2006 that Lewis Hamilton would get his Formula 1 debut.

Lewis asked my advice and, far from being critical as has been reported, I have been supportive of him.

I can genuinely say I am happy for Lewis and his family because I have known him as he has grown up through the sport.

I have grown up through it too and I see no reason to stop now. I have had a fantastic career, of which I am proud.

There is one statistic missing: a world title, but I don't need it to feel like a man.

I feel like a good man by honouring my word, by loving my fiancée Karen Minier and by taking care of my family.

Sometimes I catch myself, maybe when I am on a private jet heading back to my apartment in Monaco or visiting my chalet in the mountains of Switzerland, stepping back from it all momentarily to my childhood in Twynholm, and it seems like a different life, a whole world away.

In a way, it is.

However, in another way, I look back at the path that took me from an 11-year-old karter in a rural village to Britain's most successful F1 driver and all the craziness in between, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

I have never felt that what I do is dangerous or reckless so I can't imagine that I'm ever going to stop racing.

Why would I? After all, being an F1 driver is like enjoying a suspended childhood but with very good pocket money.

I am still passionate about racing, I still have that fire in my belly.

Am I talented? Clearly.

On my day I can beat the best drivers in the world – and I have.

Besides, I'll be honest, life outside of racing is something I am not that familiar with: I understand everything about my business. I don't understand everything about life. Racing is my life.'

© David Coulthard 2007. 'It Is What It Is' by David Coulthard is out now, price £18.99, published by Orion. To order your copy at the special price of £17.10 (including p&p) call the Live book store on 0870 165 0870