Caterham continued their intense rivalry with Marussia at the Chinese Grand Prix today. Despite qualifying behind both Marussia, Charles Pic was able to finish ahead of Max Chilton for 16th, whilst Giedo van der Garde continued his learning experience and finished 18th.
“For me that was a good race, almost as good as we could have hoped for with our current performance levels and run to a good race strategy. The car felt good right from the start – the setup we went for worked well and I had a decent start on the soft tyres and came in just as they were starting to degrade heavily, came out ahead of Bianchi and for two thirds of the race I was pretty comfortably holding 15th place,” Pic said.
“Unfortunately on my third stop I came out in 16th and didn’t quite have enough pace to fight so I finished in 16th, but the fact we were able to keep pace with the Marussia for the whole race and at some points be just out of reach of a Williams is very encouraging for the future. Now we go straight to Bahrain where we hope things will become interesting.”
Meanwhile, van der Garde was left disappointed with his performance as he aims to close the gap to team mate Pic.
“That really wasn’t a good race for me. I had another very strong start, passing three cars, but almost from the moment the first set of softs started going off I couldn’t find any real pace and was struggling for the whole race. After a good Friday it’s been a pretty tough weekend for me, but I’m a very positive person and this is all part of the learning curve I knew I’d have for the early season races and I know I have the team on my side to help me progress,” he said.
“We have the chance straight away to get back to the sort of performance we want in Bahrain so we’ll look at what we can learn from here and move on to the next race where I’m sure things will improve.”
