Van der Garde wants rain!

A SPECIAL edition helmet adorns the tiger livery synonymous with the Caterham F1 Team's home race at the Petronas Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix this weekend and Giedo van der Garde will be hoping for some lucky rain.

 

Caterham’s Charles Pic (left) and Giedo van der Garde show off their new crash helmet design yesterday.
Pic by Goh Thean Howe

 Left startled by the quickness of main rivals Marussia F1 Team, who aptly won the battle amongst the rear-enders in Australia, F1 rookie van der Garde still thinks Sepang will provide a slightly, if not more of a different perspective on the team's performance.

"For a race like this, what is most important is the preparation we have and this being our home race, we have better information about the conditions, so it should help us in that sense," said Dutchman van der Garde, 27.

Teammate Charles Pic of France qualified a rung below van der Garde as the two Caterhams rounded up the back end of the grid in Australia, but the tables were turned in the race.

Significantly both Caterhams had a Marussia finish in front of them in the race -- Jules Bianchi beating Pic to 15th spot, while Max Chilton took 17th spot ahead of van der Garde.

"For the moment it does look like Marussia are a little bit faster than us but coming to Sepang we have conditions that will suit our cars better," said van der Garde.

"In testing we found that our car performs quite well in the wet and when we arrived here, in the past two days it has rained at 4pm, which is the time the race starts on Sunday.

"So, with good preparation and some improvements to the car, then with some rain, we can expect a totally different picture here in Sepang."

Van der Garde and Pic yesterday attended their first meet-the-press session with the local media in Kuala Lumpur where the Dutchman also presented his one-off helmet designed especially for this weekend.

"At first we thought of putting the Malaysian flag on it but then we found out that the tiger is a special symbol of this country so we went with that. The helmet will be auctioned off for charity after the race," said van der Garde.

Caterham are the sole Malaysian team on the grid, but hopes of them registering their first ever points on home soil this weekend look unlikely.