In an interview with the media today, Caterham driver Kamui Kobayashi will keep his Formula 1 drive for the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend.
The Japanese driver was replaced by Andre Lotterer in Belgium and was also expected to miss the race at Monza before getting a last minute call up to return to his seat.
It was rumoured that Roberto Merhi had been strongly linked with the Caterham race driver, but he only drove in first practice at Monza. But it has been announced today by the Caterham team that Kobayashi will also be racing at the Marina Bay circuit this weekend alongside Marcus Ericsson.
In an interview with the media today, Kobayashi stated the following about keeping his seat in Singapore this weekend after a good performance for him in Monza. Kobayashi stated the following:-
‘After finishing ahead of our closest rivals in Italy, I look forward to another good fight out on track in Singapore – it will be good to see what we are capable of with the updated car at the Marina Bay Street Circuit – at street circuits anything can happen and we need to make sure we do our best.’
Even though as Kobayashi rightly points out that he finished ahead of his rivals at the last Grand Prix in Monza, he needed to in order to demonstrate that he can still deliver on the track. And Kobayashi managed to do so and he has with his performance showed to Caterham that he can deliver and race well and this could have made the difference in keeping his seat for Singapore this weekend.
It would seem that Kobayashi is once again up for the challenge that the Marina Bay circuit brings this weekend. As he rightly says, anything can happen in Singapore (with the threat of a Safety Car being very high) and Kobayashi needs to ensure that he is in a position to capitalise if things do not go their rivals way.
But it is important for Kobayashi that he once again delivers on the track this weekend and demonstrates to Caterham that he is worthy of keeping his race seat for the remainder of the season. Also, it is important that Kobayashi extracts as much pace from the CT05 during the weekend as possible and if the opportunity to beat their rivals presents itself, he takes full advantage of it.
Question is; can Kobayashi once again have a solid weekend like he did in Monza two weeks ago? Only time will tell.
