Heikki back with Caterham to help development

[John S]

In my opinion he will have a race seat by the end of the mid season break. Beating Marussia is crucial to Caterham.

   I seem to recall it was Petrov who beat Marussia last year not Heikki, in fact Kovalainen was out performed by Vitaly in my, and a lot of other people's, opinion.

   

[vintly]

If Heiki is to have any chance he will have to out perform Pic and VDG and at the moment he is 7 tenths of Pic's practice time! Come on Heiki!!

Maybe he's a bit rusty. As you say it'll be very interesting to see if he can beat Pic and VDG - it might help us ascertain if these rookies are any good or not  (Ok Pic's not a rookie but he's green to Caterham) - it's hard to tell if it's them or the cars. That's what you get when you have 2 newbies in the car I suppose.

[Monty]

Consistently 7 tenths behind VDG but both ahead of Marussia.
However, we all know FP results mean nothing!

[Scott]

He might have some new pieces on his car along with sensors too.

[Monty]

Well VDG is almost a second slower than Pic and his best time hasn't matched Heiki plus he is slower than both Marussia's so perhaps Heiki is looking OK?

[Irisado]

Kovalainen was running the old spec car.  Only Pic has the updates for Caterham this weekend.

[Alonsofan]

In my opinion he will have a race seat by the end of the mid season break. Beating Marussia is crucial to Caterham.

   I seem to recall it was Petrov who beat Marussia last year not Heikki, in fact Kovalainen was out performed by Vitaly in my, and a lot of other people's, opinion.

 

Your right Petrov did out perform Heikki last year but i meant, with all due respect to Pic and Van der Garde, Heikki would have more chance to beat the Marussia's than they would

[John S]

In my opinion he will have a race seat by the end of the mid season break. Beating Marussia is crucial to Caterham.

   I seem to recall it was Petrov who beat Marussia last year not Heikki, in fact Kovalainen was out performed by Vitaly in my, and a lot of other people's, opinion.

 

Your right Petrov did out perform Heikki last year but i meant, with all due respect to Pic and Van der Garde, Heikki would have more chance to beat the Marussia's than they would

I have to beg to differ on that, Pic gave Glock a few shocks last year and seems to be doing quite nicely at Caterham. Heikki may have his uses in setting up the car but for me it's not a given that he will do any better than last year.
I see Bianchi as the main threat in the Marussia and I believe Pic's younger & more adventurous style is the only chance Caterham have of matching him, unless they improve the car to be regularly one second ahead of Marussia.  Sadly I think Heikki's best has now passed.

[F1fanaticBD]

Kovalainen was running the old spec car.  Only Pic has the updates for Caterham this weekend.

I think it will be unfair to compare his times with others, as because he will be testing parts, in a different set of program, where his sole focus will be on the improvement of certain numbers in engineers computer, while VDG or Pic will be trying to get to the race pace. I think it proves that you need someone with experience to improve your times, people with bagful of money can't do that.

[Irisado]

I think it will be unfair to compare his times with others, as because he will be testing parts, in a different set of program, where his sole focus will be on the improvement of certain numbers in engineers computer, while VDG or Pic will be trying to get to the race pace. I think it proves that you need someone with experience to improve your times, people with bagful of money can't do that.

That's what I was indicated when I posted that comment .

Interestingly, Pic did perform a lot better this weekend with the upgrades, so the car clearly has been very poor in the first three races.  It was Kovalainen who gave them a lot of feedback on how difficult it was to drive relative to last year's car, so his technical input is clearly helping.

I still view him as being faster than both Pic, and Van de Garde, providing he's motivated enough.  Petrov didn't out perform him last year on a consistent basis, he just achieved the team's highest race finish.

[markfarrell9572]

Says alot about how highly they rate their two race drivers

[lkjohnson1950]

Good race drivers are not always good test drivers and vice versa. It looks as though his feed back made a difference to Pic's set up and results in China so they've made a sound move.

[Irisado]

Says alot about how highly they rate their two race drivers

I think that the underlying message is that they don't think that their drivers have enough experience to give the team the necessary technical feedback to improve the car in the right direction.  In terms of pace, I think that they would be pretty happy with Pic, but Van de Garde needs to up his game once he too gets the upgraded parts.