Saturday: Caterham aims even higher

Charles Pic – 19th and 19th:

The third practice session was another good session for me. We made some changes to the car overnight. That and the track temperature worked in our favor. The session went well, but during my fastest lap with the soft tires, there were yellow flags in turn 11, which forced me to slow down, but I was quite satisfied with how we arrived in qualifying.

In Q1, our goal was to finish ahead of Marussia and we managed to do so with both cars, with a larger gap than we’ve seen recently. I am therefore delighted with how this session went. Our level of tire degradation is quite good on the mediums and we have already seen that we can challenge a few cars ahead in race conditions. So even though there is a real gap with the midfield teams, I am already looking forward to having a good race tomorrow.

Giedo van der Garde – 18th and 20th:

« After experiencing understeer during the first two practice sessions, we made a lot of changes to the car and it was immediately better during the third session. We attempted another mechanical change during our second stint to prepare for Sunday but it didn’t bring us any improvements. So we reverted to our initial session settings and when we did our fast lap, the car performed well.

During the qualifying, I was not able to have a clean fast lap during my two attempts. Therefore, I don’t think my final time is the best I can do today. Unfortunately, I had traffic in the first sector of my fast lap during my second attempt, which clearly cost me a few tenths. Despite this, we finished well ahead of our closest rivals, which was the main goal today. We have clearly increased our lead over them, and I have always done well in Hungary. We have the race pace to fight tomorrow with some cars ahead. I think with a good start and a good strategy, we can have a good Sunday.