Heikki Kovalainen has confirmed that there were no issues on his Caterham which caused his unfortunate spin towards the end of Q1, which saw the Leafield-based outfit eventually qualify 19th and 20th on the grid for tomorrow’s race. Kovalainen remains confident of a competitive race, despite his minor spin.
Throughout the opening 20 minute segment of qualifying, Heikki Kovalainen enjoyed a decent balance on his Renault-powered Caterham CT01 in comparison to Korea last time out. However, as Q1 drew to a conclusion, an abundance of cars on the track hindered the Finn’s ability to set a quick time, which eventually saw him spin off the track at turn 11 and embed his car in the gravel trap.
“It’s been a pretty good weekend so far.” Explained a positive Heikki Kovalainen, “The balance has been better than we had in Korea and on my first run in qualifying the car felt ok. There was more to come but I had a bit of traffic that held me up and then on my second run I caught up with a bunch of cars going into turn 10 and lost a bit of grip, enough to put me off. I wasn’t going in too hard and there weren’t any issues with the car, I just lost the front end and even with the spin I didn’t lose any positions so I think we can still have a good race tomorrow.”
Heikki Kovalainen will line-up 20th for tomorrow’s Indian Grand Prix, after being out-qualified once again by Russian team-mate Vitaly Petrov. The Caterham duo were able to qualify ahead of Championship rivals Marussia, however the Anglo-Russian outfit are still ahead of the Leafield-based team in the Constructors’ Championship.
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