Caterham owner Tony Fernandes says Vitaly Petrov has brought a "new energy" to his side of the garage since arriving at the team in place of Jarno Trulli.
Caterham chief says Russian has brought a 'new energy' to the team
Caterham Team Principal Tony Fernandes says new signing Vitaly Petrov has brought a "new energy" to his side of the garage since joining the team in place of Jarno Trulli last month.
Despite running Trulli at the first pre-season test at Jerez, Caterham opted to make a change to their driver line-up for the first time since the team's 2010 debut with Petrov, who was released by Lotus at the end of last year, arriving at the expense of the veteran Italian.
Established lead driver Heikki Kovalainen has outqualified Petrov at both grands prix so far but the Russian has more than held his own relative to his team-mate in the two races, finishing ahead of the highly-regarded Finn in last Sunday's rain-hit Malaysian event.
Caterham were criticised in some quarters for the timing of the decision to replace Trulli but Fernandes says Petrov has displayed a positive attitude since arriving and already made a big impact.
"We wanted to bring in some new talent, and Vitaly has proven to be an incredibly good acquisition for the team," Fernandes said in an interview with the
official Formula 1 website.
"He is quick, he is talented and he has settled in immediately. A few people said to me that he was quite quiet, but the opposite has proven to be true. He is hungry, he is very eager to keep proving he has the talent to mix it at the top and he has a great sense of humour.
"He has brought new energy to his side of the garage and we are all delighted he is with us."
Speaking about the decision to drop the vastly experienced Trulli, Fernandes said the 2004 Monaco GP winner had played a key role in helping establish the team in F1 over the previous two seasons but that it was clear the 37-year-old veteran of 252 grands prix was nearing the end of his career.
"Jarno played an incredibly important role in the first two years of our team. He and Heikki both gave us the experience and the push we needed from day one to ensure we finished tenth in our first two seasons, and to set the standards we needed to mirror the teams they had both been with before joining us," the Malaysian said.
"In 2011 Jarno finished in positions that helped us seal that all-important tenth place in the championship, but he would be the first to say he was probably coming to the end of his time in F1. He had a long and very successful career, and we are very thankful we were able to work with him for our first two years."
