The Caterham team will be severely hampered at the Monaco Grand Prix by an ongoing problem with its KERS speed-boost system, Caterham’s Russian driver Vitaly Petrov told RIA Novosti on Friday.
Caterham has struggled with the device all season, as it causes the car’s rear wheels to lock under braking, when the KERS system charges itself using the car’s braking energy.
Monaco’s temporary track, which serves as public roads for the rest of the year, will cause even more trouble, Petrov warned.
“It’ll be even worse. The track there is very dirty and dusty,” he said.
“The worse the track, the greater the problems.”
Petrov suffered badly from the KERS problem at Sunday’s race in Spain, he said.
“The rear wheels were constantly locking up and the rear tires were wearing down. We lost a lot of time because of that.”
“I’ll be honest, we were expecting that. I was a bit disappointed, but nothing terrible happened.”
Petrov finished 17th in Spain, slightly off his best finish of the season of 16th in Malaysia and Bahrain, and a far cry from his career best of third for Lotus Renault at the 2011 Australian Grand Prix.
