Petrov delighted with qualifying performance
Caterham had a solid qualifying today with especially Vitaly Petrov very happy about his performance. The Russian qualified in 19th position, immediately ahead of his teammate Heikki Kovalainen. The latter rued a mistake on his final qualifying lap to miss out on 19th.
Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2: “I am very happy with today's performance. It feels great to have it all come together in qualifying today and I want to thank the team for doing a great job and helping me put together a final lap like that. There was even more time to come as I made a small mistake in sector two that maybe cost me two or three tenths, but between FP3 and qualifying we found a good balance on the softs and a KERS map that I could really get everything out of, so it's great to see it pay off with that sort of performance.
"Tomorrow's going to be an interesting race. I think a lot of it will come down to who uses the rear tyres best and as we've already seen earlier this season, we can fight with the cars ahead on Sundays, so hopefully we can carry through this afternoon's performance to tomorrow, and who knows what could happen.”
Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3: “I'm not unhappy with today's performance but we could have definitely got more out of the car this afternoon. I made a mistake in turn three that cost me some time but overall I've not really been able to find a setup I'm happy with all weekend. We've tried a few different things to find a decent balance but for some reason we just couldn't find a compromise for qualifying today. We'll put that behind us now and move on to tomorrow where we'll aim to maintain the sort of race pace we've shown in the first four Grands Prix this season. If we can look after the tyres I think we'll be ok.”
Mark Smith, Technical Director: “I think we probably got close to extracting as much performance out of the cars as we could this afternoon. Both drivers may have been able to find a couple more tenths but I am pleased with the performances they put in and now the focus moves to tomorrow's race. Tyres will be the defining factor in the race. We have already shown that we can fight with several cars ahead on Sundays and I think that careful management of the tyres and good pitstop strategy should give us a chance of putting in a good performance.”
