Mike Gascoyne, Caterham’s technical director, believes the team will make big strides forward in 2012 after firmly cementing their place as the fastest of the new teams.
The outfit, which rebranded from Team Lotus to Caterham at the start of the year, had promised a big step forward in 2011, but failed to challenge for points though at times they did bother the established Williams team.
Gascoyne is however confident that the new car will be an even bigger improvement than the 2011 car was over the 2010 chassis.
“I think it will be a much more current car than the last two cars we’ve been able to design,” Gascoyne told SkySports. “It’s probably a bigger step forward compared to the 2011 car.
“In 2010 our car was obviously very basic because we didn’t have much time to do it and we always said the 2011 car would be a big step forward.
“What’s exciting for me is that the 2012 car is probably a bigger step forward in terms of refinement of design than we made in 2011,” he added.
The aim for this season is to challenge the midfield toward the latter stages of the year.
“In the last race [of 2011] I think we qualified four-tenths away from Williams. We did that in a car without KERS – and that’s probably the difference between KERS.
“We finished at the back of that midfield pack. I think we want to start there, maybe even a bit better than that. If you look at the year last year, we started a second-and-a-half off and we finished four-tenths off that pack. We want to start with that pack and make that same level of progress.”
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