Sunday: A Positive Home Race for Caterham
The Caterham drivers were satisfied with their Malaysian Grand Prix, and Giedo Van der Garde feels he did a good job. Charles Pic, on the other hand, is a bit more disappointed because he feels he lost a lot of time when he was hit by Vergne's Toro Rosso in the pits, and without this incident, he thinks he could have done a little better.
Charles Pic – 14th:
« Off trajectory, I got a good start and was with Giedo during the first laps while the track was wet enough for intermediates. The team called me to switch to mediums for the first dry stint and as I approached my pit, I saw Vergne being released right in front of me and I couldn’t avoid him because I was turning and couldn’t do anything to avoid their mistake. The guys did brilliant work changing the tires and the front wing and I was back on track after losing 25 seconds – it’s the kind of thing the guys train for and it paid off for this first stop.
It’s really a shame that this incident happened because I could have finished much higher without it. It may have cost me a position, and even though it’s frustrating, it’s also nice to see how well everyone reacted and to see that we didn’t stop attacking, both on the pit wall and in the garage. We stopped three more times, using the hard tires for two stints and the mediums for the last 13 laps, and the car felt good throughout the race. I was able to push until the checkered flag, and I’m certain that without this problem in the pits, the final result could have been different.
Giedo van der Garde – 15th:
I got off to a really good start and the car felt great with intermediates in the first stint. When the conditions went from wet to dry, I heard on the radio that I had a puncture on the front left, but it was exactly the moment we were going to switch to slicks, so it didn’t cost me too much time. I came back out on mediums and was in 17th position with a good balance.
From there, the race went well. The predicted rain did not arrive, so we didn’t have another chance to show what we’re capable of with the intermediates, which is really unfortunate because I’m very fast with those tires. However, the car was much better with the mediums and hards than yesterday. I didn’t have the same issues with oversteer as in free practice 3 or qualifying, but we still have work to do to reduce oversteer at corner entry, and we’ll be examining that in China. We will also work on improving our settings for qualifying, maximizing each stint during practice to help us get the most out of the car on Saturday afternoon, and this should help us be in better shape for qualifying.
I also want to say what a fantastic job the guys did during the pit stops. It was very tight with Chilton each time, but I stayed ahead of him thanks to the good work on the pit wall and the mechanics. When we finished, I thanked them on the radio, and after the race, Tony Fernandes told the whole team how proud he was of the work he saw today during the stops. He’s right – the guys work tirelessly, and it’s great to see that the efforts we make in the car are the same for the whole team.
