Heikki Kovalainen believes he and Caterham had a chance to progress to Q2 during the wet/dry qualifying session for the Brazilian Grand Prix, which saw he Finn become one of the first drivers to tip-toe around the still relatively wet Interlagos circuit at the start of the session.
Throughout the final sector of the lap, the track conditions were exceedingly treacherous as the majority of the field slid their way around the Interlagos circuit on Pirelli’s dry tyre compound. On his first timed lap, Heikki Kovalainen came perilously close to colliding with the Marussia of Timo Glock, as the two jostled for track position. With Marussia currently ahead of Caterham in the Constructors’ Championship, grid position for the 71-lap race was extra imperative. However, Kovalainen believes Q2 was possible during qualifying, despite eventually qualifying for the race 20th.
“At the start of qualifying it was quite tricky as there was some standing water on track in the first couple of laps and even though the grip levels improved there was still less grip than in FP3.” Explained Heikki Kovalainen, “In the end the times kept coming down and maybe we had a chance to get into Q2, but we can be reasonably happy with how it finished. On my final lap I made a couple of small mistakes, but apart from that I was close to getting as much as I could out of the car so now we move on to tomorrow.”
With the Finn’s future in Formula 1 looking severely bleak after this season, especially with the signing of Frenchman Charles Pic, Heikki Kovalainen will unquestionably be striving for a competitive result as he and the team aim to thwart Marussia. With tomorrow’s weather forecast predicting rain for the race, a competitive result could well be on the cards as the season draws to a conclusion.
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