Caterham has officially revealed their new contender; the CT01. The car appeared on the cover of F1 Racing magazine and the first pictures of the car have been leaked on Wednesday. The main thing the crowd noticed was the car’s nose. It became the subject of a still ongoing debate with opponents comparing the car’s nose to that of a crocodile. But that was not the only change compared to last year’s car; the exhaust exist are higher which is well visible. Also the KERS system has been implemented. The team is confident that these factors will help them get better results this season.
Gascoyne: “As we are the first car out it is obviously stirring up a lot of debate, but because of the 2012 regulations I think you will probably be seeing this type of nose on most of the cars this year. The regulations have changed to limit the height of the nose-box to try to ensure that noses do not get too high. Our challenge is that you always want to get the chassis as high as possible to allow clean air flow to the underside of the car and what you see on the CT01 is our solution to that.”
“It is also no secret that we will have KERS on the car this year. Towards the end of last year it really started to affect us racing with the midfield cars. Having KERS embedded into our 2012 car is another good step forward for us. We had our best ever qualifying in relation to the cars ahead of us in Brazil and with KERS we could have possibly out-qualified a few of them.”
Gascoyne is also convinced that the FIA’s blown diffuser ban will play its parts in helping the Caterham team get a better performance. He explained: “Aerodynamics is always the main focus of performance and improvement. Last year it was all about the blown diffuser, which we struggled with because not having it in 2010 meant we were always playing catch up throughout the 2011 season in comparison to other teams. The fact it is banned this year certainly plays to our advantage.”
“So, again, we have another good reason to be very positive about 2012.”
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