Lotterer beats team mate in first ever F1 qualifying
Caterham's Andre Lotterer immediately beat his team mate on his first ever qualifying for Caterham and is not "totally ready" to start racing at Spa. Marcus Ericsson meanwhile blamed traffic and expects a difficult race tomorrow.
André Lotterer, car #45, 21st: “This is definitely a speedy way of learning how to drive an F1 car! Yesterday was dry while today was wet, so all this is now covered and I know exactly what to expect in both those conditions. I think it was a very tough qualifying session for me. I had to figure it all out while I was out there, so I’m very happy that I brought the car back without making many mistakes – it was so easy to lose it out there! In the end I managed to complete two decent laps and I’m really happy with my result.
“The most difficult part of this weekend is figuring it all out in such a short period of time: understanding where the grip is, where to brake, how to handle the throttle and the power... I’ve accumulated a lot of experience in a very short amount of time and I feel that I can do a good race tomorrow. I did some long runs yesterday and I found a good rhythm. Hopefully the conditions won’t be too tricky, because if not I will need to find out where the limit is while I’m racing – that’s my biggest concern. Nevertheless, I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s race, I’m ready for it!”
Marcus Ericsson, car #9, 22nd: “I think we could’ve been quite competitive in the rain but unfortunately we were in the wrong place on track all the time so I didn’t get a single clean lap. I’m disappointed because we could’ve done much better if we had put a lap together.
“It doesn’t really matter what weather conditions we race in tomorrow, I think we’re going to have a tough race anyway, but we need to make the most of the opportunities that come up during the race tomorrow. In the dry this morning we were out early on the option tyre, so that’s why we were a bit off the pace, but the car felt a lot better today in the dry, so if there’s a dry race tomorrow I think that there’s potential to do well.”
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: “Given the track conditions everything went very smoothly on the engine side of things, with no issues. We had to manage the energy management lap by lap as the track improved, which kept us busy, but we extracted the best performance we could from the Power Unit. The drivers are quite closely matched and Andre did a good job considering it was his first time in the wet in this car. There’s everything to race for tomorrow, particularly if the conditions remain changeable.”
