Strong race for Petrov as Kovalainen struggles with graining
Caterham enjoyed a good race at Hockenheim as Vitaly Petrov managed to finish in 16th position. Heikki Kovalainen was also on his way for a strong result but unexpected tyre graining in the middle part of his race meant he fell back to 19th place.
Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2:
“I am pleased with my performance today. It was a pretty quiet race for me and the car felt good right from the first lap, so I think I got as much out of it as I could today. The last stint was particularly good – I knew Senna was on the softer tyres behind me and I had to make sure I stayed ahead, so I just focused on getting it to the flag without making any mistakes and I’m pleased for the team with where we ended up. It’s encouraging that the car did feel better today. Our pace in the early laps was good, as it has been all season, and hopefully we can carry that through to Hungary - we certainly have a lot more data to work through now from having both cars finish today so that should help us more next weekend.”
Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3:
“The early part of the race was good for me. The car felt better than it has for most of the weekend and I was able to push, but then it felt like we had a problem after the second stop and from that point the front tyres were graining much more than they should have been. We stopped pretty late for a nose change to see if that could sort the problem out and it did as after that the car felt back to normal, but from then I was just focusing on getting the car to the end of the race. It’s pretty clear that the hotter the temperatures are the better we perform, so hopefully we’ll be able to show more speed in Hungary. It’s a circuit I like and obviously I had my first win there so let’s see what happens next weekend.”
Mark Smith, Technical Director:
“We started both cars on the soft compound tyre and Heikki and Vitaly had good pace in the first stint. They were running with the pack ahead and managing the degradation levels well. In the first stops we put them both onto the medium compounds and again both cars looked strong, certainly quicker than we have been for much of the weekend. Just after halfway through the race Heikki started reporting understeer and much higher wear rates on the front tyres than we had anticipated so we brought him in earlier than planned. However, it was clear he had a problem with the car as we then had to being him in again on lap 53 for a nosecone change, in an attempt to sort the issue out, but that did not work and he hung on to finish 19th. Vitaly finished 16th after a very good performance, particularly towards the end of the race as he came under pressure from Senna who was on the soft compound tyres while Vitaly was on the mediums. He stayed calm, did not make any mistakes and his final position is a decent result for the work he put in today."
Riad Asmat, Caterham Group Chief Executive:
“We were looking good for about half the race, just about keeping pace with the cars ahead and both drivers managing their tyres well. From around the second stops the pace started to drop off and we were not able to maintain the speed we had for the first couple of stints. It is fair to say this has not been our strongest weekend. Both drivers gave as much as they could today but we just did not give them enough performance to really fight. We have work to do before the next race in Hungary to return to the level of performance we know we should be aiming for and that will need a big effort from the whole team to allow us to head into the August break on a positive note. What is encouraging is I know how determined everybody is to do that and we will not stop fighting until we have achieved what we set out to, so let’s see where we are in a week’s time and then take stock of what we can do to keep progressing in the second half of the season.”
