Saturday: Caterham improves, for Kobayashi and Ericsson
Without making a splash, the Malaysian team is gradually closing in on its competitors and will rely as usual on reliability to perform well.
Kamui Kobayashi (n°10) – 16th and 19th
The Japanese driver was satisfied with his single-seater during the last free practice: « The car behaved quite well in FP3, a bit of oversteer but it was to be expected with the afternoon track temperatures, but we didn’t make any changes knowing it would be cooler in the evening. »
He thinks he did his best during qualifying: « In Q3, I extracted everything I could from the car on my second flying lap and ended up four-tenths of a second from Q2, which is representative of our performance level. »
He is optimistic about the Grand Prix: « For tomorrow, I think we are much better positioned than on a first race, especially with the work done yesterday, so if we can be just as reliable, we could have a good race. »
Marcus Ericsson (No. 9) – 19th and 21st
The young Swede found his car better after FP3: « We improved the braking and overall balance so I approached qualifying quite confident to be able to fight with my closest rivals. »
Like his teammate, he aims for a trouble-free race for a positive result on Sunday: My last flying lap was the best of the weekend, but I couldn’t do a big installation lap, so I could have gone faster, but overall I’m relatively happy with how this Saturday went. I’ve had a much better weekend so far in terms of reliability, and with the improvements we’ve made today, I’m going to focus on having a solid race tomorrow.
