Saturday: The Caterham drivers struggled on mediums
Charles Pic and Giedo Van der Garde both suffered from strong understeer today with the medium tires, but both men nonetheless remain confident for tomorrow's race because the CT03 seems better with the hard tires and its pace with the intermediates also seems good, which could be interesting if it rains again during the race tomorrow.
Charles Pic – 19th and 20th:
We had a very good free practice 3 session, making real progress, especially on long runs, but I don’t think we could have done much more today during qualifying. I had a lot of understeer in my first run, so we adjusted the pressures for the second one, but I still couldn’t limit the understeer. Considering the performance gap with the cars ahead, we probably finished as high as we could have hoped.
From now on we will focus on tomorrow’s race. During free practice 3, we found a good direction to optimize our race settings so I think it will be interesting. It will very likely rain and I like when the conditions change on track so we will see what happens.
Giedo van der Garde – 21st and 22nd:
The qualifications didn’t go very well for me today, to be honest. I had an issue with a lot of understeer with the medium tires throughout the day and I really couldn’t make them work as well as during the last race, and this obviously affected my pace. It’s strange because the car felt good with the hards during free practice 3 today, but I couldn’t get the mediums to work, so we’ll have to study that tonight.
However, the car works well with the hards and the pace we have with the intermediates could be interesting tomorrow, I think. It has rained every day at about the same time, and it will be mid-race tomorrow, so strategy will be very important. Physically, I feel good, fully prepared for the race, so we will see what our plans for the race will be and I hope we can continue our good form from free practice 3.
