• Caterham news

Kovalainen sees Caterham strides for 2014

Heikki Kovalainen: "Everything is progressing better than ever before" © Sutton Images

Enlarge

Heikki Kovalainen is sure Caterham will deliver a quicker car in 2014 than it currently has after seeing progress off-track.

While not working for the team in a racing capacity, Kovalainen has made four FP1 appearances for Caterham as it uses his experience to analyse new parts on its car. Speaking exclusively to ESPN at Monza, Kovalainen said the team has been noticeably improving as it prepares for 2014 but that it can't rest on its laurels as the standard of competition next year is a big unknown.

"Everything is progressing better than ever before, but whether it's good enough or not is hard to say," Kovalainen said. "With so many changes coming up you don't really know what other people are targeting. So we know that we're going to make a car that is quicker than this car but the question is are the top guys also going to make a car as quick as they have now or are they going to have to drop a little bit of performance because of the regulation changes?

"This is what we don't know, so that determines the gap that we're going to have next year and whether we can catch that up or not. So I'm quite happy so far with what I see how the team is performing. We're still a small team but we are working better and improving every area as I think we should do. I don't think there is any area which is particularly weak, but all the areas could be better I guess."

Kovalainen added that being able to do more work at the factory was one key area where he'd noticed an improvement.

"It's people and it's the facilities are improving. The tools that we have at the factory means we can do more stuff in-house and everything is just growing so it's getting better."

Chris Medland is assistant editor at ESPNF1

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.