Sunday: Kovalainen behind Petrov at Caterham, due to lack of KERS
As often, the Caterhams were isolated in the race, noticeably faster than the Marussia and HRT but slower than the rest of the field. The two Caterham drivers therefore fought for 17th place, which went to Vitaly Petrov, as his teammate Heikki Kovalainen suffered a KERS failure.
Vitaly Petrov – 17th:
I got off to a pretty good start and was quite quickly up to speed and in the rhythm with Heikki and the cars in front before the first stop. Both the pace and the degradation were really good on the first set of tires, so we opted to extend the stint and change strategy, from two stops to one. I came out just behind my teammate, and I passed him when he had a KERS issue – after that, I was 15th, but a few laps from the end, some faster cars passed me, and I finished 17th. Despite that, it was a good race. We have some new parts coming for Abu Dhabi, so let’s see what happens there.
Heikki Kovalainen – 18th:
My start was good. I was 17th after the first lap and in the rhythm with Kobayashi and the pack while we were pulling away from the cars behind. We had planned to make two stops, but with the car’s performance, we went further on the first stint and switched to a one-stop strategy, coming in just after mid-race. I had a good pit stop but two-thirds into the race, I had a KERS issue which meant I had to let Vitaly pass. From there, it was just about bringing the car to the finish. Losing KERS obviously didn’t help, but it was still fairly easy to pull away from the cars following us, and without this problem, I’m sure I would have finished higher. Now, we look forward to next week’s race, where we’ll have some upgrades on the car, and perhaps they will help us close the gap to the cars ahead so we can fight longer on race days.
