Tony Fernandes admits now is the time for Caterham to step up and establish themselves as a member of F1's midfield.
Fernandes says team now ready to take place in the midfield
Tony Fernandes admits that now is the time for Caterham to step up and establish themselves as a midfield team.
The former Team Lotus operation begin their third season in Formula 1 aiming to challenge the bottom end of the sport's midfield on a consistent basis after showing flashes of such speed in race conditions towards the end of last year.
Having run comfortably ahead of fellow 2010 new boys Marussia and HRT last season, Fernandes says the next step into the midfield is therefore logical - and one he feels is realistically within the team's capabilities.
"Melbourne 2012 is a very important race for us and one I am possibly more excited about than any race we have participated in our two short years in F1," the Caterham team principal said.
"We shed the new team tag at the start of 2011, but for most of last season we were racing in what felt like no-mans-land. We were comfortably ahead of the two teams that made their debuts at the same time as us in 2010, and for a large part of last year we were what felt like inches away from the teams just ahead.
"Now it is time for us to take our place as a midfield team, and we have everything in place to do just that. If we do, and find ourselves racing teams like Williams, Toro Rosso and Sauber I think that will be an incredible achievement, from a starting point of an empty factory in September 2009 to racing teams who have decades on us in terms of establishment and development."
The team's new Renault-powered CT01 has shown strong one-lap pace in particular during the winter, and aside from a problematic second test at Barcelona, impressive reliability levels.
Heikki Kovalainen acknowledges the team's pre-season programme has had more positives than negatives, but insisted that the team were staying grounded until the true picture of the grid's relative competitiveness was revealed in Melbourne.
"After three pretty solid weeks of testing we're heading to Melbourne in good shape. We've clearly moved on from where we started in 2011, and are a long way ahead of where we were in 2010 but we're still all staying very realistic about what we can do this season.
"Apart from a few issues in the second test, which were all sorted out for T3, our reliability has been good, and both Vitaly [Petrov] and I put in laps that showed we are close to the pace we want to be. But as everyone knows the tests don't really tell you anything about where you are against everyone else, so we won't really know anything until Saturday in Melbourne."
New signing Vitaly Petrov bore the brunt of the team's setbacks at the second Barcelona test, but after a more straightforward second week at the Circuit de Catalunya, the Russian says his integration into the team has gone well and work to get the CT01 more to his liking is beginning to pay dividends.
"It will also be a good weekend for me generally as I'm really enjoying life with my new team. It's still early days, but I've been given a great welcome by everyone and I'm starting to build a good relationship with my engineer, so i think we have a good year ahead of us, whatever happens.
"We spent quite a lot of time in Barcelona looking at how to fine tune the setups specifically for me, and while we do have more work to do in Australia we definitely made some real progress at the last test which puts me in as good a position as we could hope for when we get to Melbourne."
Caterham Technical Director Mark Smith, meanwhile, confirmed that the CT01 would feature a new front wing and bodywork cooling option at the season-opener next week.
