Friday: Caterham can finally evaluate its new parts

Charles Pic – 18th and 19th

I had said before we arrived here that this was my favorite track, and I am pleased that we had a good Friday here, a solid day in which we clearly made some progress. We started free practice 1 with a bit more aero work, doing some laps with aerodynamic paint to continue evaluating the parts we had brought to Silverstone and here, where we still had some improvements on the brake ducts. After that, we began the full program, and initially, I had a few issues getting the front tires up to temperature. The track conditions were good, cooler than they should be on Sunday, so that will obviously change how the tires behave in the race, but we worked on our third run and made some progress on our setup for tomorrow.

During lunch, we made some changes to the ride height and the rear anti-roll bar, and at the start of free practice 2, we immediately completed a six-lap stint and instantly found a better aero balance. This led us to the stints on option tires, and up to that point, I was very satisfied with the car’s performance. It was the same on the long stints. The pace was consistent on option tires [the soft tires] and good with the primes [the medium tires] with fairly low degradation on both compounds. When the session ended, I think everyone was pleased with the work done today.

We definitely needed a problem-free Friday to help us catch up on the workload we’ve had since Silverstone and even since Canada. Fridays are of course very important, and with the mileage completed today, we’ve set ourselves up well for Saturday and Sunday. Now, we need to keep this momentum going, and with the race pace we have, I’m really looking forward to seeing where we will be on Sunday.

Giedo van der Garde – 20th and 20th

« In summary, it’s a good day for us, starting with free practice 1 which was a good session. We did a few laps for an aero program at the beginning, and several new ideas on the car, notably with the brakes where we had a new setting that seems to work well since I was immediately able to brake later and harder. Generally, the first laps of the stints are marked by understeer, so we spent a bit of time on that, and by the end of the session, the car was behaving relatively well. One really positive thing about free practice 1 is that we tried something on the rear that gives me more grip on acceleration when exiting corners. The track is mostly made up of slow or medium-speed corners, so good traction on their exits is important, and that’s something we want to maintain all weekend.

For the second free practice, we started with a different floor, which allowed us to conduct several comparative tests with the new version we had at Silverstone. The car still had a bit too much understeer, so we made some mechanical changes, and at the same time, we tried the option tires for the first time; the car was getting better and better. On long runs, we have a reasonable level of degradation, and at the end of the session, I must say I was quite happy with where we were.

We had much better weather than we had on Friday in Canada or at Silverstone, and it definitely allowed us to accomplish the aerodynamic work we needed to do. It gave us a lot of data to work on tonight, and our goal is to make another step forward tomorrow. It seems we have some space with the team behind us, and we’ve clearly gained some ground on Williams here, so by working hard tonight, it could be a good weekend for us.