Solid race for Caterham to 17th and 18th
Both Caterham F1 drivers were fairly happy with their afternoon performance at Austin, as both believe there was not much more to extract from the car. The race was straightforward for both drivers and they moved up from their qualifying places to finish in 17th and 18th positions.
Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2:
Start on medium tyres, Lap 23: pitstop 1, hard tyres, Finished: 17th
“For me that was just about as much as I could get out of the car today so I’m pleased with how it went. The start was pretty crazy, everyone on cold tyres going into turn one with a load of cars going off track, but I got through cleanly and as soon as my tyres came up to temperature I pulled away from the cars behind pretty comfortably. We’d planned to do just one stop and it was timed perfect, the boys got me out quickly when we switched to the hard compound so it all went as we wanted. The tyre degradation was also pretty low – we’d seen from the long runs on Friday that it wouldn’t really be a problem, but apart from a small vibration I had from the brakes for the last third of the race, it was a good afternoon without any issues.”
Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3:
Start on medium tyres, Lap 21: pitstop 1, hard tyres, Finished: 18th
“That was one of those races where we probably couldn’t have got much more out of the car. I’ve had issues all weekend with getting heat into the front tyres and it was the same again today for the first few laps. At the start I made up one place and then passed Glock pretty quickly and from there it was relatively easy to control my pace for the rest of the race. The stop went fine, the pitcrew did a very good job today, and apart from the tyre issue, it was about as much as we could have hoped for.”
