17th position may not be regarded as a particularly strong result, but Charles Pic is delighted to have finished so well after a mixed weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix for Caterham.
Pic had qualified in last position, but he made a good start and managed to fight past Jules Bianchi, Max Chilton and teammate Giedo van der Garde before hassling Williams’ Valtteri Bottas towards the end of the race.
“I’m really happy with today’s performance. Finishing 17th doesn’t really tell the whole story as we ended the race right behind one of the Williams cars which shows that we’ve made some good progress this weekend,” Pic said in a team statement. “The blue flags didn’t help as without them I’d have had a much better chance of overtaking him, but it was still good that I could attack him in the last few laps.
The Frenchman was delighted with the car, which was running with a vanity panel this weekend to eradicate its stepped nose.
“The car felt great for the whole race, particularly after my third stop when we went for a 25 lap final stint on the hard tires and I was able to manage the degradation levels well which meant I could push right to the flag.”
Despite this good form, Pic was confident that the team could work hard over the next two weeks in order to run well again at the Monaco Grand Prix.
“There’s still more to come from the parts we brought here, quite a bit more in fact, so we’ll work on that back at the factory and see how much more we can extract for the next race in Monaco.”
Pic’s result was certainly a good one, and to finish so close to a Williams is an impressive feat considering the team won last year’s Spanish Grand Prix. The battle at the back looks set to rumble on, with Bianchi suffering some misfortune during the race. Otherwise, we may have seen Caterham and Marussia competing on-track in Spain.
