David Coulthard has revealed his battle with the eating disorder bulimia. David, recently engaged to Belgian motorsport presenter Karen Minier, told how he forced himself to vomit to keep his weight down.
The Monaco-based multimillionaire, 36, said he became obsessed with his diet and exercised obsessively while in his teens.
In his new autobiography, Coulthard, from Twynholm, Kirkcudbrightshire, said: "By my teens, I was nearly the same height I am now but I weighed just over nine stone.
"The problem was as I got taller, I started to become a lot heavier than some of my counterparts. I stopped eating fattening foods and before I knew what had happened, I was bulimic.
"In my mind, the only way I could keep my weight down was by making myself vomit.
"At first, I was just very, very lean. I became skin and bone but I weighed myself every morning, noon and night.
"In the evening, if I was half a pound heavier I would get in the pool and swim. Some people would say it was obsessive behaviour but you don't achieve a certain level of success without some form of dedication."
Coulthard, who has been engaged twice before to Texan heiress Heidi Wichlinski and Brazilian model Simone Abdelnour, said much of his playboy image was exaggerated.
He said: "In 1999, I bought a yacht called Highlander and took a party around Sardinia. 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."