Sunday: Caterham gives up but stays positive

Heikki Kovalainen – abandonment (suspension)

« Vitaly and I experienced issues in the first turn at the start and I lost a bit of time behind Glock, but I managed to overtake him quickly and from there I showed a good race pace, enough to reduce the gap with the cars in front. I lost the DRS until lap 6 and had to cut the KERS from the beginning.

The two stops went well, but I felt that the car was pulling to the left when braking. I came back to the pits, and it seems that it’s due to a suspension problem. I’m sure we can fix this for next week, and we have shown that we have made a step forward, so it’s not a bad thing.

Vitaly Petrov – retirement (steering)

« I had a fantastic race and it’s really a shame that we had to retire. Before that, everything was going exactly as planned. The team did a great job helping me pass Heikki during the first stop and I was catching up to Senna and Massa and the car was really well-balanced. I was managing the tires well and we clearly showed the pace we can have this season so even if it’s not the way I imagined my first race with my new team, we can take some positives from this and go to Malaysia where we know we can perform well. »

Mark Smith – Technical Director

« Today, we showed what our car was capable of. We had different strategies with the two cars, Heikki started with the soft tires and Vitaly with the mediums, and everything was going as planned until the issues encountered mid-race. »

Vitaly had some issues with his power steering and his performance in his first race with the team deserves to be highlighted. With Heikki, his car was pulling to the left when braking, so we decided to have him retire rather than take risks. However, I am very encouraged by our race performance and we have a good foundation to build on. It’s clear that we can compete with certain teams in the pack, so we will head to Malaysia and try to have a good weekend in front of our fans.