Circumstances prevent Caterham to qualify better

F1 Grand Prix, GP United States, Circuit of The Americas

Both Kovalainen and Petrov underperformed today in qualifying and were unable to extract the potential of their Caterham cars. The drivers struggled to get the tyres up to temperature and were troubled with traffic throughout the session.

Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3:
FP3: 1.41.011 (19 laps) 21st
Q: 1.41.166 (7 laps) 22nd
“We underperformed today, it’s really that simple. We went with a plan that didn’t work and unfortunately both Vitaly and I weren’t able to get enough heat into the tyres to get the best out of them, or manage the traffic well enough to get a clean lap in. Tomorrow’s another day so now we need to regroup and have a better performance in the race than we did today.”

Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2:
FP3: 1.40.753 (19 laps) 20th
Q: 1.40.809 (7 laps) 21st
“Quali obviously didn’t go how we wanted it to. I had traffic issues on every lap and wasn’t able to put a clean lap together, but even without that we’ve struggled with the tyres here all weekend and that showed today. It was bad timing for us that the HRT stopped on track just when Heikki and I were on our quickest laps and having been stuck behind them, but you can’t plan for that so we need to put today behind us and hopefully we’ll be better tomorrow.”