Kovalainen gets solid 13th place for Caterham

F1 Grand Prix, GP Abu Dhabi, Yas Marina Circuit

Caterham F1 saw its cars finish in 13th and 16th positions at Abu Dhabi. Heikki Kovalainen was happy with his pace and drove a solid race to one of the team's best results. Vitaly Petrov on the other hand struggled to find grip and finished in 16th.

Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3:
Start on soft tyres, Lap 28: pitstop 1, medium tyres, Finished 13th
“I had a good race today. In India the balance had felt good in the race and if I hadn’t had the KERS problem I’m sure I’d have had a better afternoon there. Here it was the same – the car felt good and with more performance we’d be up there in the fight. We need to keep working on the new parts we brought here to get the most out of them and we have three more days on track here to help us do that so we have several reasons to be positive about the remaining two races.

“Today I had an ok start and my pace was pretty good. After the quicker cars passed me I was really on my own for most of the race. When the safety cars came out obviously everything bunched up again but after each restart I was able to pull away easily and finished the race after probably getting as much as I could out of the car today.”

Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2:
Start on soft tyres, Lap 27: pitstop 1, medium tyres, Finished 16th
“I made quite a good start and was side by side with Heikki. If we’d both braked at the same point we’d have probably hit so I braked a bit early and from that point I was struggling for grip. I’m not sure what the reason was but on both stints I just didn’t have the pace to attack the cars ahead. I had understeer for most of the race and that really held me up. It’s obviously a bit of a disappointing race, especially when you see that Heikki had good pace today, but sometimes it’s like that. The car felt good on Friday afternoon but yesterday and today the grip just wasn’t there. We have a bit of time now to analyse why and then make sure we get back to the pace we know we can find at the next race in Austin.”