Kovalainen completes busy day for Caterham
Heikki Kovalainen was in the CT-01 for the second day running, and today completed a massive 139 laps on the new car. Contrary to yesterday, the team didn't experience a single problem. Reserve driver Giede Van Der Garde will take over tomorrow.
Heikki Kovalainen:
“I feel very happy with the work we have completed today. Yesterday we had a problem that was nothing to do with the car so today was our first real day of testing and we had a trouble free day, completing most of what we wanted to on day one and day two and working through a variety of setup changes. We ran on each of the tyre compounds and I’m really starting to get a feel for the car. Basically it’s good news because it confirms what I thought yesterday. This car is a lot better than the 2011 car, it’s quicker and everything works as we want it to. We’ve made very solid progress and I feel really good physically, so I think there’s a lot more to come.”
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer:
“An excellent day of testing and I want to congratulate Heikki and the whole team for the job we have done today. We ran KERS for the first time and completed everything we had planned with that system, so thank you to Red Bull Technology and Renault Sport F1 for helping make that part of the program run so smoothly.
“Today we were concentrating on the setup program, using long runs to really start understanding what this car can do, so having completed 139 laps we have made a huge amount of progress, particularly compared to last year, and now we have to make sure we keep up this sort of momentum for the rest of the tests.”
Riad Asmat, Caterham Group CEO:
“That was the sort of day that makes this job so enjoyable. We were reliable, quick and we learnt a huge amount about the car. Quite a contrast to yesterday when we had to deal with a problem that we had never encountered before, but the team worked very hard and had it all rectified last night. Today we completed more laps than any other team and had no problems at all. That enabled us to make up the ground we lost and give the engineers and the team back at the factory a huge amount of data to work on tonight in preparation for Giedo getting into the car tomorrow. We want more days like this as it is the hard miles we put in now that will put us in the best possible shape for the season ahead.”
Chassis: CT01-#2
Total laps: 139
Best lap: 1.21.518
