Albers praises 'extraordinary' Lotterer

By on Friday, August 22, 2014
Caterham F1 Team

Caterham F1 Team

Caterham team principal Christijan Albers has praised the progress made by rookie Andre Lotterer during his first day in the car at Spa Francorchamps.

Lotterer was drafted in by Caterham to replace Kamui Kobayashi for this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, marking the first time the German has driven a Formula 1 car in over a decade, in order to aid the team with their large upgrade package.

Le Mans victor Lotterer ended the day less than a tenth of a second behind team-mate Marcus Ericsson and Albers heaped praise on his driver.

"We’ve certainly seen some visible signs that we’re starting to move forward after the summer shutdown," he said.

"Today we’ve made progress and this is what we intend to do during the rest of the season. Having André in the car is definitely helping us, he has done an extraordinary job on his first day driving for us."

Lotterer, who finished second practice in 20th position, was pleased but conceded he is still facing a steep learning curve.

"I’m very pleased with today," he said.

"This morning’s first practice was a good session for me; I got used to the car quite quickly and now I just need to optimise everything in terms of driving style. Considering it was my first time out, it all went according to plan and I was able to get a good feel of what it’s like to drive the car. Now we need to keep working like this and continue improving the car.

"FP2 was another good session and everything went smoothly even though we had to stop a little bit early due to a technical problem. It’s definitely been another learning process for me on the option tyre – I went out and I didn’t know what to expect, but I think it went very well.

"We’ve been able to follow the programme as planned, improving while learning and trying to play with the car slowly. We did some long runs and I’m certainly starting to feel comfortable with everything, even though I’m still in the learning curve."


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