The Caterham F1 Team emerged satisfied from its 2012 Indian Grand Prix.

The Caterham F1 Team emerged satisfied from its 2012 Indian Grand Prix. As such Vitaly Petrov and Heikki Kovalainen qualified nineteenth and twentieth, respectively, just missing out on the second part of qualifying. Not bad considering the latter spun into a gravel trap during the qualifying session. Petrov started the race on super-soft tyres, then emerged from his pit stop on lap thirty-one with the harder compound. Kovalainen began on super- softs too then pitted on lap thirty-two for the hard tyres. Pleasingly for Caterham, both cars were switched from two to one stop strategies thanks to low tyre degradation. Petrov then continued to finish seventeenth with a best lap of 1:31.163. Heikki Kovalainen, who finished eighteenth and had problems with his KERS, managed 1:30.786. In comparison, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel managed 1:28.723 on the way to his fourth consecutive victory.

Petrov said: "The pace and degradation levels were both really good on the first set of tyres, so we opted to go longer and changed strategy from two to one stops. I came out just behind my team mate and then passed him when he had a KERS problem - after that I was up to fifteenth but with a few laps to go a couple of quicker cars behind passed me and I finished up seventeenth.” Kovalainen added: “My start was good. I was up to seventeenth after the first lap and keeping pace with Kobayashi and the pack ahead as we pulled away from the cars behind.” The Finnish ace continued: “I had a good stop but about two thirds of the way through the race I had a KERS problem which meant I had to let Vitaly pass. From there it was really just a matter of getting my car to the end of the race.”

More F1 News CATERHAM Tech specs, colours and model guides