Saturday: Kovalainen propels Caterham into Q2

Heikki Kovalainen – 18th and 16th

It was an excellent qualifying session for our team. It’s a real bonus for us to enter Q2, but we already saw this morning that we were close to a few cars and we thought that with today’s conditions, hot and rather windy, we could use the soft tires to propel ourselves into Q2, and it worked. We also saved a set of tires for tomorrow while being quite sure that we couldn’t have qualified higher. With the tire degradation we saw yesterday and today, it’s clear that tire management will play a very big role tomorrow.

Overall, I am thrilled for the team. We really worked hard to put ourselves in a position where we can compete, and today we showed that we were close enough to achieve this kind of result.

We made progress during the winter, and even if we haven’t really shown it this season yet, we knew we could achieve this kind of performance, so it’s a great day for everyone at Caterham, both at the factory and on the circuit.

Vitaly Petrov – 20th and 20th [19th on the grid]

« I am reasonably satisfied with the way our day went, keeping in mind the problem we had with the floor in Free Practice 3, which cost us some time. We couldn’t find the right balance with the soft tires, which could have helped us during qualifying.

My stint on medium tires was good, I was very close to my teammate and the car felt good, but when we switched to softs, the car just didn’t handle well. It wasn’t really a balance issue, it was more about how the car behaved under braking, and I think that’s what cost me on soft tires.

Despite this, I think we seem to be heading in the direction where we should be. We are closer to the cars ahead of us than we were in China, and having seen how we can fight with certain cars in the pack during the race, I think tomorrow could be a good day for us. It will certainly be interesting. There will be many pit stops, and it will be about who uses their tires best.