Caterham drivers struggling with balance
Following overnight set-up changes on both Caterham cars, both drivers got oversteer this morning which then needed to be sorted out. Charles Pic didn't manage to do so and qualified 21st while Giedo van der Gardo qualified 19th for the Abu Dhabi GP.
Charles Pic, 1.43.528, 21st: “Overnight we made quite a few changes to the car and in FP3 we’d gone from the understeer we’d had on Friday to oversteer on the first run. A couple more changes helped fix that a bit and we found a slightly more positive balance for the second run.
“We started quali on softs but I still couldn’t didn’t have a balance that was working for me. The car was understeering too much to really be able to push with and that affected both my runs in Q1. It’s a shame as there’s definitely some pace in the car here, compared to our direct competitors, but we have the race to show what we can do. On race pace we have an advantage, and with the good tyre deg levels we saw on the long runs I think we have some interesting strategy options to look at for tomorrow.”
Giedo van der Garde, 1.43.252, 19th: “Similar to my teammate, the changes we made to the car since FP2 had brought in a bit too much oversteer so we used the first couple of runs to sort that out. The track was obviously improving as more rubber went down and by the time of the first run on options I was pretty happy with how the car was performing.
“In quali we went for two runs on the options. On the first run everything went to plan and I was up in tenth until the cars ahead went from primes to options. On the second run we timed it well but on my slowdown lap I was blocked by one of the Force Indias which was going really slow around the whole lap which meant the tyres cooled down and I probably lost about three tenths on my last quick lap. It’s funny though, because even though I finished ahead of our nearest rivals and my teammate I’m a bit gutted as I think I’d have been in the 1.42s, still not enough for Q2 but enough to show what the car’s capable of here. Anyway, we have a long race ahead tomorrow and last year the team scored a 13th here, so I’ll take the fact I finished best of our little battle and focus on getting as good a result as possible in the race.”
