Friday: Some issues on the Caterham side

Ma Qing Hua – 22nd (Free Practice 1):

« It was a great moment of pride for me to be the first Chinese driver to take part in an F1 session in my country, but to be honest, I focused on my work and I am delighted with how things went. I want to thank Caterham for this opportunity and for helping me feel comfortable in the car and throughout the weekend.

We did 20 laps and my times kept decreasing as I became more comfortable in the car. I felt we had a small issue at the end of the session, which cut short my fourth stint, and after some checks, it seemed to be a sensor problem so I was able to finish the session with a car that felt good after the final modifications.

I learned a lot this weekend already, and that was my priority for these free practice 1 sessions – to ensure I followed the planned schedule and not push too hard in order to learn as much as possible. Cyril Abiteboul [the team director of Caterham, ed.] told me he was happy with my performance at the end of the session, so I’m really pleased.

Charles Pic – 21st (Free Practice 2):

« I didn’t drive during free practice 1, leaving my car to Ma, and I was back for the second session. Things didn’t start very well as I had a hydraulic problem right from my first stint, but we studied it in the garage and managed to fix it fairly quickly. However, with this problem, I lost a lot of track time costing me a stint, and it was important to give us enough options for the car’s settings. Despite everything, we completed the planned program, conducting a few tests with the mediums’ settings, then we did a performance stint with the softs before ending on a long run with the softs to see how they behave over a longer distance. The fastest times seem to be on the first lap with the softs, but I didn’t have a clear lap on my fastest stint, and it cost me time, but we ran a lot today, and we still have a few settings to study for tomorrow, so we will look at where we can improve tonight and hopefully we can attack tomorrow. »

Giedo van der Garde – 21st and 20th:

The two practice sessions went well for me, but we had a few issues throughout the day that set us back a little. This morning, we had a KERS problem which forced me to run without KERS for the rest of the session, which obviously didn’t help, and then in the afternoon, I damaged one of my sets of medium tires at the first corner, and we had to abandon our plans for this second session in order not to use another set of tires. Despite this, we have a lot of data on the mediums from both sessions, and our performance run on softs went well. Tire wear levels are going to be significant here, particularly with the softs, which were completely finished at the end of my long stint with them, so we will need to study that to see how to manage things on Sunday.

We know that it’s not going to be an easy weekend for us, but I think we can fight tomorrow and Sunday. The atmosphere in the team is good, and if we can replicate a race performance similar to the one we had on Sunday in Malaysia, it should be fine.