Friday: Kobayashi and Ericsson in their place for Caterham

Kamui Kobayashi (No. 10) – 20th and 21st

The rising sun driver managed to complete his program despite a session interrupted by some rain. He shares his first impressions of the Austrian track: « It’s good to drive on this circuit, especially the double left turns 5 and 6 and the last two corners before the pit lane, but what we still don’t know is how the tires will behave when the track heats up. » Indeed, today, the temperature was cooler than it will be on Saturday.

During the second practice session, the car had more traction and grip despite some understeer. He then switched to super-soft tires but found their behavior strange: I found six-tenths on this set but it was weird, the grip level was the same as with the softs and even though I didn’t expect a big difference, it was still a bit strange not to have more grip. Then, finding the behavior of his single-seater suspicious under braking, the Amagasaki native preferred to end his Friday.

Marcus Ericsson (No. 9) – 22nd and 22nd

This morning, the Swede was only able to complete 8 laps due to an electrical issue with the control unit of his MGU-H. However, he made up for it in the second free practice session, completing a total of 56 laps for the day.

In terms of degradation, he is satisfied with the performance of his tires, whether they are soft or super-soft. He gives a relatively positive assessment of his FP2 session: « Overall, it was a good afternoon, obviously better than the morning, but we still have a lot to do to understand where the oversteering comes from and to try to find more grip. However, we are quite good at improving from Friday to Saturday this year and we will try to do it again here. »