• British Grand Prix

Kovalainen 'can't wait' for upgraded Caterham

Heikki Kovalainen qualified 16th for the European Grand Prix © Press Association

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• Race:
• British Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Heikki Kovalainen
• |
• Vitaly Petrov

• Teams:
• Caterham

Heikki Kovalainen admits that he "can't wait" to take to the track at Silverstone to see how Caterham's latest upgrades will work.

A number of upgrades introduced at Valencia allowed Kovalainen to outqualify both Toro Rosso cars and run at a competitive pace in the race before a KERS failure. Having seen the sort of improvement expected at the last grand prix, Kovalainen is excited by what further progress can be made with the next set of updates at Silverstone.

"Honestly, I can't wait to get back in the car and see what we can do at this year's British Grand Prix," Kovalainen said. "At the last race in Valencia we clearly made improvements, enough to help me put the car into Q2 on merit and we have more upgrades coming for Silverstone.

"For this race it's important that we carry our qualifying speed and good reliability through into Sunday as issues like the KERS problem I had in Valencia impact all the hard work the team is doing at the factory and in the wind tunnel to get us where we want to be. If we can do that I think we can have another very good weekend and I'm really looking forward to giving our home fans something to cheer for."

Vitaly Petrov was equally enthusiastic, but warned the upgrades needed to deliver more lap time than any other teams manage to gain.

"As we'll be bringing more new parts to the British Grand Prix I think it's another race where we'll be able to take a step forwards," he said. "I'm sure everyone else will be bringing upgrades so we need to make sure that we don't just make gains, but we improve more than our nearest rivals. That's a big challenge but after seeing the gap to Toro Rosso shrink in Valencia we have a clear target just ahead and that gave the whole team a real boost. Hopefully we'll be able to make similar levels of progress at Silverstone - if we do I think the British Grand Prix could be very interesting. The team made great progress in Valencia and I really hope that we will continue in the same manner at the next race."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.