FP1 & FP2 - Singapore GP report: Caterham Renault

Kamui Kobayashi

"We still need a bit more time to fully understand the car here in Singapore, but I have a good feeling for this weekend, it’s a track I enjoy driving. This morning in FP1 I wasn’t entirely happy with the balance of the car and, even though the car improved slightly from FP1 to FP2, it’s still not enough. We have a lot of homework for tonight. We need to improve but I’m confident that we can."

Marcus Ericsson

"It’s been a good start to the weekend; we completed plenty of laps in FP1 as well as trying a few different settings. I felt good in the car straight away - I already knew the track from my GP2 days, so there were no surprises. It’s a circuit I really like and it’s even better to drive in an F1 car. FP2 wasn’t as positive as the first session, but we still managed to complete many laps which is always important for us. Performance-wise, we were not as competitive as we would’ve wanted to be - I didn’t put a lap together on the option tyres so that was a bit disappointing, but it’s only Friday so it’s not a big problem, we still have time to fix it for tomorrow. We can all be reasonably pleased with our start, but now we need to work even harder throughout the weekend.

"It’s definitely the toughest race of the year - it’s going to be important to drink a lot and keep getting mineral and salts over the weekend because Sunday will be a challenge, but I’m more than ready for it!"

Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader

"Our focus was on getting to grips with the fuel consumption as clearly this will be a key point for the race. We used a very old PU in Marcus’ car with no issues. This is good news as we can save a bit of mileage on the race engines for a push in the last part of the season. We will change Kamui’s unit overnight as it was showing some signs of trouble, but we have a good margin in the engine plan so it will not be a problem. Overall we’ve had two useful sessions today.