Ericsson happy to beat Kobayashi in qualifying
Marcus Ericsson was probably the only one satisfied at Caterham, as for the first time this season he managed to qualify ahead of his teammate. Caterham jointly underperformed however and will start the Spanish GP in 21st and 22nd place.
Marcus Ericsson, car #9, chassis CT05-#01, 21st: “For me today’s been both good and bad. I’m pleased I’ve qualified ahead of my teammate for the first time this year, especially because it’s at a track I really like and one everyone knows well, but overall we’re obviously not happy with where we are with performance and we need to improve.
“In both FP3 and quali I had similar low-grip issues to yesterday and that’s costing a lot of laptime. The car behaviour is unpredictable pretty much the whole way round the track and that makes putting together a clean lap very difficult. However, we have to put this behind us and focus on the race. Overall, we’re starting from the same bit of the grid as we have for most of the season and we have to focus on having a clean race, maintaining the much improved reliability we’ve had since China and grabbing whatever opportunities come our way. I want to leave Spain on a positive note and we’ll all do everything we can to give us the best chance of making that happen.”
Kamui Kobayashi, car #10, chassis CT05-#03, 22nd: “Another difficult day with more of the same grip problems I had in both practice sessions yesterday. We made quite a few changes to the car for FP3 but it still didn’t improve things enough, so we went into quali with a package we knew we’d be struggling with.
“In quali we went for two single lap runs on options and the first was ok, but on my quick lap on the second run I lost a bit of time behind Bianchi and had the same sort of balance problems I’d had in all the practice sessions so I just couldn’t get any more out of the car. Maybe with a completely clean lap I’d have been a couple of tenths up, but not enough to be where we’re aiming for.”
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: “There isn’t a huge amount to say about performance today. We got the maximum from the Power Unit and ran the optimum programme and settings over FP3 and qualifying but the positions are what they are. Some other drivers are starting out of position tomorrow so the goal is to be reliable and be there to capitalize on what may happen in the race.”
