Caterham aims for the midfield in 2012
The Caterham F1 team (formerly Team Lotus) achieved great performances this season, notably by outperforming Williams, Lotus Renault, and Sauber on several occasions. But the goal for 2012 is to do even better, to regularly compete with the midfield teams.
Since its debut in F1 (under the name Lotus Racing), the Caterham F1 team has continuously improved in terms of performance. However, from a ranking perspective, things haven’t changed; it finished 10th in 2011 just as in 2010, without scoring a single point.
But compared to 2010, things evolved positively in 2011 because Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen managed several times to regularly outpace drivers from more prestigious teams like Williams or Lotus Renault. Appetite grows with eating, and the Hingham team wants to do even better in 2012; it wants to beat its rivals more regularly.
«We finished the championship in 10th place two years in a row, and that allowed us to have financial solidity. We are now a recognized Formula 1 team. I think the announcements made about our developments and the arrival of new partners show that we are truly a serious company, so now it is time to compete against more teams on the grid and start beating them, » said Mike Gascoyne.
The Technical Director of the Caterham F1 team believes that with the arrival of new partners, particularly Dell and General Electric, in 2011, the team has continued its development process and this should start to pay off now.
«We have always been a true racing team, but we were constrained by the limitations of being a new team. But now, it’s time to move forward. We have settled into F1, and it’s time to start beating our rivals.
Similar sentiment from Kamarudin ‘Din’ Meranun, Deputy Team Principal of the Caterham F1 team, who hopes to see his team’s progress continue in their third year in Formula 1.
If you study the season that has just ended, and the times we achieved, we are already competing with well-established teams in F1. In our first year (in 2010), we were in our own division battling among the last three teams, but this year we managed to surpass them significantly. We even lapped some of them, Kamarudin ‘Din’ Meranun shared.
Team Lotus delivered impressive performances in 2011, particularly during the Japanese Grand Prix, where Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli finished on the same lap as the winner, Jenson Button, and Kovalainen was just 13 seconds behind a Williams. This was proof that the T128 could compete with its rivals.
We are very close to the teams ahead of us and by the end of the season we finished almost at the same level. So what I hope is that we will be ready to fight in the midfield in 2012.
The CT01 – the name of the single-seater for 2012 – will be equipped for the first time with a KERS, the one used by Red Bull Racing, which could therefore provide the team with an additional performance boost. Some expected the team to score its first points this season, which ultimately did not happen, but it could probably happen in 2012.
