Giedo van der Garde showed potential in the Caterham this weekend after making it in to Q2 of qualifying and finishing the race in sixteenth place while team-mate Charles Pic was forced to retire from the race early after a strong start due to an oil leak.
Pic had started the race well and had managed to pass both Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi shortly before being told to retire due to an oil leak. “We started on a set of options and I was off the line cleanly with no problems on lap one. I passed both Chilton and Bianchi and by lap eight was catching my teammate but then I was told to box as we had an oil leak so we stopped the car to avoid any damage to the new engine we used today.
Pic was philosophical about the weekend, “Racing’s sometimes like this – we had good pace on Friday and Saturday, the car felt well balanced and we’d made some progress. While today’s race obviously didn’t go to plan I’m not down about it – we have another chance in Monza in two weeks to continue to build on the gap to our nearest rivals and I’m sure we’ll bounce back there.”
Team-mate van der Garde had a strong showing on Saturday when he made it in to the second part of qualifying as he avoided the cut-off in Q1, despite losing two positions in the race the Dutch driver was happy with how the weekend panned out.
“My start was good,”said van der Garde. “I had clear space going into turn one and held 14th place until mid-way through lap two, but then it wasn’t really possible to hold off some of the cars who’d started behind us. Realistically, we’d expected that to happen so I was focused on pulling away from Bianchi and Chilton and giving myself a big enough gap to manage the race we’d planned.
“Overall this has been a really good weekend. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if it had rained today, but for what was effectively my first home F1 race I think we got the maximum for the car. Saturday was an incredible feeling and I’m really pleased we could give the team, our partners and the fans such a lift in quali – now we have to make sure we can do the same for the rest of the season whenever the chances come our way.”
