Giedo: Sunday in China - The race

Weather

Race: Dry, hazy, air temp 22° / track temp 32° (start), 18° / 29° (lap 28), 17° / 25° (lap 56)

Giedo van der Garde

Start on soft tyres

Lap 6: pitstop 1, medium tyres

Lap 20: pitstop 2, medium tyres

Lap 37: pitstop 3, medium tyres

Finished 18th

Fastest lap: 1.42.357 (lap 42)

Giedo van der Garde, car 21, chassis CT03-#5: "That really wasn't a good race for me. I had another very strong start, passing three cars, but almost from the moment the first set of softs started going off I couldn't find any real pace and was struggling for the whole race.

After a good Friday it's been a pretty tough weekend for me, but I'm a very positive person and this is all part of the learning curve I knew I'd have for the early season races and I know I have the team on my side to help me progress.

We have the chance straight away to get back to the sort of performance we want in Bahrain so we'll look at what we can learn from here and move on to the next race where I'm sure things will improve."

Caterham

Win gives Alonso optimism for the title Race

Fernando Alonso said he won the Chinese Grand Prix with pace in hand after taking the chequered flag 10.1s ahead of his nearest rival Kimi Raikkonen, giving him optimism for his title fight this year.

Alonso made a strong start and passed Hamilton for the lead on lap five using DRS. From that point onwards he used the strength of the Ferrari over long stints to ease ahead of his rivals and by the time the varying strategies worked out he was comfortably in the lead.

"It was a fantastic race for us from the start to the end without any big problems from the car," he said. "The tyre degradation was better than expected so we managed the pace. It feels great after the retirement in Malaysia because we had some pressure to finish the race. The two races we have finished this year [Australia and China], one was in second place and the other a victory so definitely the start of this 2013 campaign is looking good and I'm very optimistic."

When it was clear that Alonso had a comfortable lead his race engineer asked him to take it easy, but the Ferrari driver said he had pace in hand throughout the race.

"You always push in a Formula One race; it's impossible not to push," he added. "But it's true that we had some pace in our pocket, but it's difficult to know when to use it depending on the state of the tyres. We have more potential and hopefully we can show that in Bahrain next week."

Asked how he expected to perform in Bahrain, Alonso added: "We expect a tough race again and I think in Bahrain we will see maybe different conditions. Who knows how competitive anyone can be but definitely, as I said before, the races that we've finished this year the car seems to be able to be on the podium again in Bahrain."

Giedo van der Garde finished 18th.

ESPN.F1

Saturday in China - Qualifying

Weather

FP3: Dry, sunny; min / max track temp 34° - 36°, air temp 25° - 27°

Q1: Dry, sunny; min / max track temp 40° - 41°, air temp 27°

Fastest laps / positions:

FP3: PIC 1.38.821, 20th / VDG 1.39.652, 22nd

Q1: PIC 1.39.614, 21st / VDG 1.39.660, 22nd

Total laps:

FP3: PIC 18 / VDG 18

Q1: PIC 6 / VDG 6

Runplan

Giedo van der Garde, car #21, chassis CT03-05

FP3

1103 - 1117: Run 1, 7 lap (medium tyres)

Changes: rear camber

1128 - 1139: Run 2, 6 laps (medium tyres)

Changes: front wing flap angle

1152 - 1201: Run 3, 5 laps (soft tyres)

Q1

1409 - 1415: Run 1, 3 laps (soft tyres)

Changes: front wing flap angle

1417 - 1423: Run 2, 3 laps (soft tyres)

Driver quotes

Giedo van der Garde: "After two productive sessions yesterday I just couldn't get the same feeling from the car in FP3 and that carried over into qualifying. Like Charles, I've had quite a few small problems in each session and together they've held us back quite a bit. We're struggling to understand the tyre behaviour here and when the track temps went up today it was like having to start again with our understanding of how to get them working. My final position in quali is obviously disappointing, particularly as I made a mistake in turn two on my second run, pushing too hard into the corner and that cost me about four tenths. Without that I'd have finished a bit higher up the grid but now we have to focus on tomorrow's race and aim for the same sort of performance we put in at the last race in Malaysia."

Caterham (shortened)

Giedo after Friday practice at Shanghai

Giedo van der Garde - FP1: 21st, FP2: 20th

"Both practice sessions for me were ok but we've had issues all day that have held us back a bit. This morning we had a KERS issue that meant we were running without KERS for the whole session, and that obviously didn't help, and then in the afternoon I overcooked it going into turn one on one of the medium sets and that meant we had to cut short the FP2 plan so we didn't use up another set of tyres.

 

 

 

Despite that we have a lot of good data on the medium tyres from both sessions and the performance run on the softs went ok. Degradation levels are going to be big here, particularly on the softs which had pretty much gone by the end of the long run we did on them, so we'll have to look closely at how we deal with that on Sunday.

"We know this isn't going to be a particularly easy weekend for us but I still think we can fight tomorrow and on Sunday. The atmosphere in the team is good and if we can repeat the sort of race performance we had on Sunday in Malaysia we'll be ok."

ESPN.F1

Giedo on China

China's the next race and we're going back to where I did my first FP1 with Caterham last year, so it's the first track this season I've already driven on in an F1 car. Hopefully it'll be better weather this year as FP1 last year started out wet and was a bit damp for the whole session so I wasn't really able to push. 

It would be good if it was sunny as that would mean we can get the most number of laps done and one thing we are going to be focusing on in China is work on improving our setup options for qualifying, using the practice sessions to give us as many options as possible for the race but also for quali. 

I didn't have the car behaving exactly as I'd like in either Australia or Malaysia so I want to get that right in China.

Facebook Giedo

Chinese GP preview quotes: Giedo van der Garde - Caterham

Giedo van der Garde: "China's the next race and we're going back to where I did my first FP1 with Caterham last year, so it's the first track this season I've already driven on in an F1 car. Hopefully it'll be better weather this year as FP1 last year started out wet and was a bit damp for the whole session so I wasn't really able to push. 

It would be good if it was sunny as that would mean we can get the most number of laps done and one thing we are going to be focusing on in China is work on improving our setup options for qualifying, using the practice sessions to give us as many options as possible for the race but also for quali. I didn't have the car behaving exactly as I'd like in either Australia or Malaysia so I want to get that right in China.

"The Shanghai track itself is a very technical circuit. It's a mix of slow, medium and high speed corners so finding the right balance to deal with the whole lap is going to be key to performance in both quali and in the race. We had oversteer issues on entry into the corners in Malaysia and Australia and that definitely hit my race pace, particularly as it was impacting on tyre degradation levels, so we've done a bit of work on that with Pirelli in Milan and back at Leafield since Malaysia so we'll see what we've achieved when we get to Shanghai."

Autosport.com

Van der Garde seeks improvement in China

Giedo van der Garde hopes to improve in China after a difficult start to his F1 career.

Giedo van der Garde has admitted that the handling characteristics of the Caterham have made the opening races of his F1 career difficult. 

Throughout winter testing, commentators observed that the team's 2013 challenger, the CT03, suffered from a lack of balance that stemmed from a strong front end but weak rear. 

Speaking in the team's event preview for this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, van der Garde admitted that this has lead to increased tyre wear which in turn, has not provided him with the chance to perform at his maximum.

“I didn't have the car behaving exactly as I'd like in either Australia or Malaysia so I want to get that right in China,” he commented. 

"We had oversteer issues on entry into the corners in Malaysia and Australia and that definitely hit my race pace, particularly as it was impacting on [tyre] degradation levels.”

However, he said that during the three week break between Malaysia and China, the team has worked closely with Pirelli to resolve the tyre wear issues and is keeping an open mind ahead of this weekend's race. 

“We've done a bit of work on that [tyre degradation] with Pirelli in Milan and back at Leafield since Malaysia so we'll see what we've achieved when we get to Shanghai,” he concluded. 

Van der Garde lies 19th in the driver's standings. 

By George East / Crash.net