Friday: A good day at Caterham despite the rain

Charles Pic – 20th (no time) and 20th:

We knew from the forecasts that Free Practice 1 would be impacted by the weather, but this made the session quite useless. The installation lap was good, but then we waited until the last 10 minutes to go out when there were some other cars on track and unfortunately, I went off in the last corner. We didn’t lose too much time compared to the other cars because everyone stayed in the pits, and when we went back out on track, we saw that everything was good so it didn’t affect our Free Practice 2.

Free practice 2 took place in dry conditions, but it was colder than what seems to be expected for Saturday or Sunday, but we covered many laps and we have a lot of work for tonight. We have a balance with which I am happy and grip levels are good right from the out lap – we need to work on low-speed traction as we are lacking it, but grip levels seem manageable, especially with the hard tires, so overall I think we will be good here.

Giedo van der Garde – 8th and 19th:

This morning’s session was obviously disrupted by the rain, which is unfortunate both for the fans who were outside of the stands and for us, given the plan we had for these free practice 1. We wanted to conduct some aerodynamic evaluations, especially because we have some new components with the floor here, but with the track so wet and no sign of improvement, we remained cautious this morning.

This afternoon, the weather was much better, and we had a good session. We tried to make up for the time lost during free practice 1, and although we couldn’t complete the full aero tests, we were still able to make real progress in this session. The GP2 cars helped dry the track a bit, so we could push from the first stint and ended with a good balance on both compounds. We still have a bit too much oversteer with the mediums, especially in the slow corners, but not in the fast ones – there, the car seems balanced, and that’s positive. We’ll work on it tonight though.