Caterham Do Not Expect to be at The Top of 2014 M'sian Formula 1

SEPANG (Selangor, Malaysia), March 28 (Bernama) -- Team principal of Caterham F1 Team, Cyril Abiteboul is not putting high expectations this time around at the 2014 Petronas Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix (GP), which will be held at the Sepang Circuit here this Sunday. Abiteboul said the team managed to make a good recovery from the last race in Melbourne and hoped that they could do the same in Sepang in this weekend. "To be honest we are surprised by the situation, we did a lot of mileage in the pre-season testing but it's not been so good when it came to actual action even in Australia and again here, today. "We're trying to stay calm, to take things as they come. Obviously we are not in the best position to prepare for the weekend," he told a press conference here Friday. In the first practice session (FP1), the Malaysian-owned F1 team's drivers Marcus Ericsson (Sweden) and Kamui Kobayashi (Japan) settled for 17th and 19th positions, clocking 1:45.775s and 1:51.180s, respectively. Meanwhile, in the second practice session, Ericsson settled for 20th position, clocking 1:45.703s, while Kobayashi did not race due to the power unit which is also related to the clutch and gearbox on the car. Kobayashi said he was not happy with the problems that he had to face and he believed the team will try to fix these problems to have a proper race in this weekend. "This isn't good, obviously, and I'm not happy that we've lost another Friday, but it is important to say that I know how hard everyone is working in our team to try and fix these problems so we can have a proper race weekend. "The fact Marcus was able to run the most laps of anyone in FP1 shows that we can be reliable - we just need to make sure both cars run like that for the rest of the weekend or we'll have another difficult race ahead," said Kobayashi. -- BERNAMA