Caterham duo rue disastrous first day

2014 Australian Grand Prix

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Caterham’s drivers were left none the wiser about their car’s potential in Melbourne after completing just three laps between them in today’s two practice sessions.

“That was a more difficult start to my first full grand prix weekend than I’d have liked,” said Marcus Ericsson. “Hopefully that means we’ve got all the problems out of the way on day one.”

“This morning it was an electrical issue with the engine that meant I only did one lap – out on the main straight the power suddenly dropped but I was still able to get the car back to the pits and when we had a look at it we found it was an electrical problem so that was fixed over lunch.

“In the afternoon we were back out at the start of FP2 but this time, when I [pitted], there was a hydraulics leak.”

Caterham replaced the Energy Store and control electrics for the MGU-K on Ericsson’s car.

Team mate Kamui Kobayashi endured a similarly disappointing day.

“The problem on my car was to do with the fuel system – it was fine on the installation lap but when I boxed we had a small fire under the engine cover which came from a fuel system leak.

“The fire was out immediately but when we’d found the problem we knew it couldn’t be fixed in time to run in FP2 so made the decision to remove the power unit so we could fix the issue and aim to run properly tomorrow.”

The team’s troubles came as something of a surprise as they completed more mileage than any of their fellow Renault power users during pre-season testing.

“One lap in both practice sessions is obviously not a good way to start the season, particularly after our reliability had been good in the Bahrain tests,” Kobayashi added, “but we know what the problems are on side and we’re all working very hard to fix them for tomorrow.”

2014 Australian Grand Prix

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Image © Caterham/LAT

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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11 comments on “Caterham duo rue disastrous first day”

  1. Lucas Wilson (@full-throttle-f1)
    14th March 2014, 9:22

    I can seriously see TF pulling the plug at the end of this year.

    1. Not so sure about that @full-throttle-f1. A lot depends on how they go from here

    2. Likewise.

    3. With their budget I would pull too. I wanted them to be better but they aren’t, I think all of us want but this way it’s impossible, I didn’t even see this new livery.

      1. How do you know they aren’t “better”.. We haven’t seen them run yet. All opinions are null and void until we’ve seen what the car is capable of. Lotus an established and much more experienced team are struggling bad, so I think we need to give all the teams a break for the first few races as they iron out the kinks.

  2. Maybe they should paint their nose green again. The car seemed more reliable then…

    1. lol… the luck with superstitions..

  3. It looks more hideous now, with that black

    1. Nah, it’s just as hideous as before :)

    2. Looks like they were trying to go the RBR route of thinking the bit of black at the end will help cover up the ugly part….

      not so much.

  4. there was a hydraulics leak.

    A nickel for every time Lotus/Caterham had a hydraulics leak and they would be rich!

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