United States GP: Practice notes - Caterham

16/11/2012

Heikki Kovalainen: "The first lap we did in FP1 was on a track that probably had less grip than anywhere else I've ever driven! As we're at a new circuit that was to be expected but the track layout lived up to expectations - it's a proper driver's track and as it keeps evolving it's going to get even faster which will give us a chance to really find out what it's all about.

"In the morning session we were mainly focussed on the normal P1 program, running through baseline setups and aero work and then in the afternoon we went onto more tyre work and longer runs on both compounds. We need to work on improving the grip levels but I'm ok with where we ended up and with the amount of information we have from both sessions I think we can find more time tomorrow."

Vitaly Petrov: "I'm really enjoying my time in the US! It's my first time in America and as soon as I arrived I spent some time walking around Austin and found it's a great city, really cool.

"In P1 We had to make a couple of minor changes to the floor but it didn't hold up the program too much and we found an OK balance relatively early on. In the afternoon we had the first runs on the medium tyres and then put in a lot of laps on the long runs. We definitely need to do some work on how we can get more heat into the tyres and how to improve the rear of the car but we'll work on that tonight and hopefully have a better day tomorrow."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.