Caterham still not close enough to midfield
Caterham has suffered from the lack of dry time running in order to properly understand the car's drastic aerodynamic upgrades introduced at Silverstone. As a result, qualifying performance was not what the team hoped for as the cars qualified in
Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3:
FP3: 1.18.366, 18th
Q: 1.17.620, 19th
“For where we are right now that was pretty much the perfect lap. I didn’t make any mistakes, nailed every apex and had a clean lap, so I’m pleased with what I got out of the car today. Closing the gap to the cars ahead is obviously our target and I think we are still finding out how to unlock the real potential of the upgrade package we first ran in Silverstone. Taking the package as a whole there are a lot of elements we need to get right to really use its potential and I think we still need more dry running to really understand what it will really give us. We’ll keep working on achieving that and perhaps we’ll see more of its value tomorrow as it’s due to be sunny, and in Hungary where the hotter conditions will definitely suit us better than the cold, wet weather we’ve had in Germany and at the last race in Silverstone.”
Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2:
FP3: 1.18.818, 19th
Q: 1.18.531, 20th
“That was a bit of a difficult session after the rain at the end of FP3 changed the track conditions. We were having some issues warming up the front tyres and that, combined with traffic, meant I couldn’t really push as much as I had been in the morning session. Despite that, all weekend we’ve been progressing, doing a good job to push us in the right direction, and tomorrow I think we can do well. We have decent race pace and I think we’ll have a good result as we’ve been showing all season.”
Mark Smith, Technical Director:
“I am reasonably satisfied with the performance today. I think it is clear that we have more to come from the cars and, in the circumstances today, Heikki got as much out of it as he could. Vitaly had a couple of issues with traffic that cost him some time in Q1 but the over-riding goal is to make sure that both drivers have setups they can use to extract every ounce of performance from the work being done back at the factory and in the wind tunnel.”
Riad Asmat, Caterham Group CEO:
“Today’s results are not where we want to be. We have been clear since before Silverstone that we need maximum time in the dry to understand how much the extensive upgrade package can give us and the weather this weekend has not helped that. However, we have the race tomorrow where we can definitely put in a good performance in both cars, and then Hungary which will suit us much more than Germany or Silverstone. We will keep fighting, keep working and not stay still – that would be the easy option but we are determined to join the midfield this season and that is keeping everybody motivated through every single lap.”
Weather
FP3: Dry, overcast, air temp 18° - 19°, track temp 26° - 30°
Q1: Dry, overcast, air temp 17°, track temp 25° - 24°
