Friday: A productive day for the Caterham drivers
Giedo van der Garde participated in his last free practice session of the 2012 season, and the Dutch driver was delighted with this hour and a half spent on the Interlagos track. The two official drivers, Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov, are quite satisfied with the testing conducted, although there is still room for improvement.
Giedo van der Garde – 19th [Free practice 1]:
« It was really a great way to end my free practice sessions 1 for 2012, that’s for sure. We completed a number of laps, and I must say I had a lot of fun today! The circuit is fantastic, especially with the development tires for 2013 that I was on during my first stints, and it’s good to know that I helped the team by doing work that will be useful for this weekend.
I thanked the guys at the end of the session today for all the work they’ve done to help me this season. I’ve really enjoyed working with them this year and I feel like I’ve learned a lot and developed well too. Now it’s back to a normal plan for the rest of the weekend and I hope it will be good for the team.
Heikki Kovalainen – 20th [Free Practice 2]:
« Not having driven during free practice 1, I was back in the car during this afternoon’s session and it was important to drive as much as possible. We completed the planned program, focusing on tire usage and settings with different fuel loads, and I think everything went well. It’s a shorter lap here in Brazil than on quite a few other circuits, but our times seemed pretty good compared to the cars around us, and with a bit of work tonight and tomorrow, we should be good for qualifying and Sunday’s race. »
Vitaly Petrov – 21st and 19th:
I think we made good progress during the two sessions and I’m quite happy with where I ended up. In this morning’s session, we tested the development tire and the hards and gathered a lot of data with both types. We also tried several different aerodynamic configurations which gives us options for this weekend, especially considering there is a risk of bad weather for Sunday. In the afternoon, we worked to improve our settings on long and short stints – we still need to do more to get the most out of the hardest compound [the hards] but the car feels good with the mediums and we can even extract more from these tires for the rest of the weekend.
One thing that was immediately clear is the tire degradation here. It’s completely different from last week in Austin where one stop was the obvious choice – if it’s dry here on Sunday, it will more likely be two or three stops, so tire management will be key.
