Saturday: Caterham has made good progress

Charles Pic – 19th and 19th

We made some changes to the car overnight, and our balance was better during the third practice session. Initially, the car behaved almost like it did during the first session. It was very front-heavy, as if we had gone too far with the aerodynamic balance, especially in medium and high-speed corners. We then adjusted the front wing angles for the second stint, and it didn’t change much. The adjustment increased understeer but did not improve the car’s stability. We then made a new mechanical change for the performance stint, and the balance immediately improved, especially in medium-speed corners. We still had work to do before qualifying to improve rear stability. That’s what we worked on during lunch, so we started qualifying with a car that was well-balanced.

In qualifying, we did two stints on super softs, going out late in the session. The first stint went well, but there was plenty of room for improvement. That’s what I managed to do during the second stint, finishing 19th with a significant lead over our closest rivals again. I had a bit of traffic on my fast lap, but even without that, we wouldn’t have been able to fight much with the cars ahead. So, we will start tomorrow from where we expected. With the car being much better compared to Friday, I’m looking forward to the race.

Giedo van der Garde – 20th and 20th

Friday went pretty well for us and the car behaved the same way on Saturday. We made a few changes overnight and introduced a bit too much oversteer at the start of the third practice session, especially in the second sector, but generally, it was okay. We didn’t make many modifications for the second stint since I was satisfied with the car. Then I put on the super softs for the performance stint at the end of the session, and it went well again. I made a mistake with the DRS in the third sector on my fastest lap, but I was positive going into qualifying.

The qualifying session was very close. The first stint in Q1 was good, but we clearly had time to make up, not enough to fight with the Williams, but clearly enough to get back ahead of Bianchi and Chilton. In the end, the first sector wasn’t as clean as we hoped, but the other two sectors were good, and it was a very nice fight with my teammate. This time, he finished ahead. So we will start the race behind the Williams. The goal is to repeat what we did in Singapore and fight with them as much as possible. We have recently shown that we have the race pace to do this. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.