Caterham confident after solid Friday
Caterham have had a reasonable Friday, one that's been going better than any in the while. Kamui Kobayashi in particular proved optimistic about the competitiveness of his car this weekend.
Caterham have recently struggled to keep on equal footing with Marussia, but today at Hungary things went fairly smoothly for the team.
“Overall, it’s been a better Friday than we’ve had for a while", said Kamui Kobayashi. "We made good progress on nearly every run and it looks like from our times today that we may be quite a bit more competitive with our nearest rivals than for quite a few races. Good reliability has been one of the keys to that, from us and Renault, so we should be pretty pleased with how Friday’s gone for us in Hungary.
“On my first run in FP1 there was almost no grip at all, plus I had some issues with front and rear brake locking so we made quite a few changes to the car. It proved difficult to really judge how the balance actually was – it was switching from oversteer to understeer in each corner so we made more mechanical and aero changes for the next run and we definitely started to find some time. By the end of the session the grip was improving and I was finally starting to find a balance that was working, but also important was that we had a clean session with no reliability issues so we could make sure we ran through the whole program.
Marcus Ericsson was less positive but still found considerable improvement as the sessions progressed.
Team principal Christian Albers saw other reasons to smile for.
“From all aspects of our team operations this has been a much improved Friday for us", the Dutchman said. "Our performance levels have increased, both in the garage and on track, and good reliability from us, Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology has helped us achieve all our targets today. We also have a number of new sponsors on the cars here in Hungary which shows that we are making positive progress across all areas of the team – now we aim to continue this upward trend for the rest of the weekend.”
