Saturday: Caterham could have gone faster
In qualifying, the Caterham drivers could have hoped for better if they had managed to fully exploit the medium tires, but remain confident in the potential of the CT01 during the race. Having incurred a 5-place penalty in Australia that will see him start at the very back, Heikki Kovalainen hopes to quickly regain the lost positions at the start of the race.
Heikki Kovalainen – 20th and 19th:
« It was a strange qualifying session for me. I know the car can go faster because I lost time on my second run on medium tires. I made a few mistakes and felt there wasn’t much grip at the rear, so we could have expected better, but just not today.
Tomorrow, I need to make sure to pass the cars that will be ahead of me as quickly as possible, and then find my pace.
The rain that was announced hasn’t fallen yet, but who knows what might happen tomorrow. It’s always interesting here, and with the conditions we have, it will be essential to make sure we reach the end of the race and see where that puts us.
Vitaly Petrov – 19th and 20th:
We had a rather aggressive strategy for qualifying, but it didn’t really pay off. I didn’t really have a very well-balanced car, whether in free practice 3 or in qualifying, and I think we need to spend a bit more time looking at how we can extract the maximum from the tires.
From now on, I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The car behaved really well last Sunday and on the long stints we did here, it’s more stable, so we will aim to get a good start, avoid issues in the first corners, and focus on the fight ahead of us.
Mark Smith, Technical Director
We opted for a long first stint on hard tires with Heikki, giving us more options for tomorrow, taking into account the positions he would lose due to his penalty received in Australia. Both cars then ran on medium tires for their second stints and we could have been a bit faster if we had maximized performance with the mediums.
We have a plan for tomorrow that gives us the best chances to exploit the very good race pace of the car, so a little more work tonight and a solid day should allow us to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves for this weekend.
