Kamui Kobayashi was one of the stars of qualifying after the Japanese driver managed to not only get into Q2, but qualified 15th ahead of a Force India and Sauber.
The Caterham driver hailed the performance on his comeback to F1.
“That’s a good way to come back, not only for me in my first qualifying session of the year, but also for the whole team after such a difficult day yesterday,” he said, after they completed just two laps in practice one and two.
“The guys worked very hard until just before the curfew this morning and fixed the car after all the issues we had yesterday – that meant we could do 19 laps in FP3 and give ourselves a chance of fighting in qualifying.”
Koabayashi believes the car had more pace in it, but due to various troubles, it couldn’t be extracted.
“Honestly though, with so few laps, I still didn’t have the car set up at all as I’d have liked and there would definitely have been a lot more to come if we’d had a normal Friday.
“In qualifying we timed it just right and my fastest lap was set just as it started to rain. It was a good lap but not really close to what we could have done with more running on Friday but going into Q2 was a good reward for how hard the team has worked, and I could see just what it meant to the whole team to go into Q2 in our first race of the year.
“Tomorrow it looks like it could be another day of rain and sun and if we can maintain the improved reliability we’ve had today, I think it could be one of the most interesting races for a long time!”
