Saturday: Caterham can look straight ahead again

Heikki Kovalainen – 19th and 19th [17th on the grid]:

« I am personally satisfied with what I got out of the car today. In my second stint, I was following Hülkenberg on the out-lap from the pits and I couldn’t get my tires up to optimal temperature, so in the first sector of my flying lap, I suffered a bit from understeer, but the other two sectors were as good as they could be.

The race pace of the car has been quite good all year, so the goal now is to have a solid race and be in a good position to take advantage of anything that might happen in front. Really, personally, I’m not worried about the cars behind me. The team is doing everything they can to keep progressing, and I want to do everything I can to help them.

Laps like today, although they are not as fast as we would have liked, are what I can do: not make mistakes, get everything out of the car, and help push the team in the right direction.

Vitaly Petrov – 20th and 23rd [22nd on the grid]:

In Free Practice 3, we found that the car was not performing as well as on Friday, even though it seemed quite good in Free Practice 2. By analyzing the data, we discovered that the tire temperature was not as optimal as we would have liked, and we made some changes for qualifying that immediately improved the setup. On my first stint, the car was behaving much better and on the second, I was at least seven-tenths quicker but made a mistake in turn 14, which cost me a lot of time.

Despite this, I am not disappointed with my final position. Heikki’s lap proves that we are about six-tenths ahead of the cars behind and, although they are doing a good job trying to catch up with us, we are also working as hard as we can to widen the gap on them and try to fight with the cars in front.

Tomorrow’s race gives us the opportunity to do that and, with a good strategy and careful use of the tires, I think we can have a good Sunday.