No issues caused Kovalainen’s Q1 spin

Heikki Kovalainen has confirmed that there were no issues on his Caterham which caused his unfortunate spin towards the end of Q1, which saw the Leafield-based outfit eventually qualify 19th and 20th on the grid for tomorrow’s race. Kovalainen remains confident of a competitive race, despite his minor spin.

Throughout the opening 20 minute segment of qualifying, Heikki Kovalainen enjoyed a decent balance on his Renault-powered Caterham CT01 in comparison to Korea last time out. However, as Q1 drew to a conclusion, an abundance of cars on the track hindered the Finn’s ability to set a quick time, which eventually saw him spin off the track at turn 11 and embed his car in the gravel trap.

“It’s been a pretty good weekend so far.” Explained a positive Heikki Kovalainen, “The balance has been better than we had in Korea and on my first run in qualifying the car felt ok. There was more to come but I had a bit of traffic that held me up and then on my second run I caught up with a bunch of cars going into turn 10 and lost a bit of grip, enough to put me off. I wasn’t going in too hard and there weren’t any issues with the car, I just lost the front end and even with the spin I didn’t lose any positions so I think we can still have a good race tomorrow.”

Heikki Kovalainen will line-up 20th for tomorrow’s Indian Grand Prix, after being out-qualified once again by Russian team-mate Vitaly Petrov. The Caterham duo were able to qualify ahead of Championship rivals Marussia, however the Anglo-Russian outfit are still ahead of the Leafield-based team in the Constructors’ Championship.

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