Friday: Caterham finds its footing
As expected, Caterham finishes both sessions of the day at the bottom of the standings. A normal day for the small team that reviewed the two types of tires offered by Pirelli for this first Grand Prix of the season.
Charles Pic – 21st and 20th:
For our first full day of running, it went well. We clearly still have work to do to be where we want to be. We knew where we would stand compared to our competitors at the start of the season, so there are no real surprises today.
During free practice 1, we followed a normal program with the medium tires, but we still have work to do to extract maximum performance, so we’ll look into that this evening. During free practice 2, we did some long runs on the mediums before switching to the super-softs. The degradation [with the super-softs] was good, particularly on the long runs, and the lap times were consistent. Now we have to ensure that we can achieve the same level of performance with the mediums.
Giedo van der Garde – 22nd and 22nd:
« First of all, I want to say how nice it was to start my first weekend in F1. I have worked very hard for many years to be here and many people have worked to make my dream come true. I want to thank them.
On the track, FP1 went well. We managed to complete a decent number of laps focusing on the tires by using the mediums throughout the session. We can therefore have insights into the degradation level of this compound. The second session started well. On the first stint, I experienced a bit of understeer which we resolved for the second stint. Unfortunately, I locked up at turn 3 and went into the gravel. The anti-lock system kicked in before I could get back on track, and that was the end of my afternoon. However, we have a lot of data to analyze tonight. We will have to do our best tomorrow morning, but I’m looking forward to it and it’s part of the learning process.
