Saturday: Chandhok makes progress at Team Lotus
While Heikki Kovalainen diminished his chances of improving his time by making a mistake in his second run, Karun Chandhok made further progress and is now only 8 tenths of a second behind his teammate.
Heikki Kovalainen – 19th and 19th
« I am relatively satisfied with today’s performance but I think there is always more to extract from the car. On the second stint, I was still struggling to get the front end to work, and I might have pushed a bit more than I should have, so I couldn’t improve on my first stint. The latter went well and I was able to set a decent time, so all in all, it wasn’t too bad. »
Karun Chandhok – 23rd and 21st
« I must say that I am satisfied with my qualification today. Tony told me that if I could stay within one second of Heikki, he would be proud, and I finished eight-tenths off, so the goal is achieved.
One of the challenges today was to determine the grip of the soft tires with low fuel levels, and it felt like a qualifying practice, but my times improved throughout the weekend.
As I said, the last two days have been dedicated to learning about the car, the tires, and how to best exploit the DRS system, so getting as close as I could hope to my teammate is quite a nice progression.
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technician
« Karun improved steadily throughout the weekend and if he had done his ideal lap, I’m sure he would have finished just behind Heikki.
With his second set of tires, Heikki made a mistake, but it didn’t affect his position as he had a good lap with his first stint.
With the rain forecasted for tomorrow, I think we can achieve a strong performance, and the goal is to gain a few positions and bring both cars to the finish line.
