CATERHAM’S HEIKKI KOVALEINEN believes he would win the Formula One title in a front-running car.
Kovalainen is entering his sixth season in F1 and third with Caterham, formerly Team Lotus, and admits he is capable of delivering a world championship.
Asked if he had the belief and capacity to claim the championship, Kovalainen said: “100 percent, 100 percent.”
“I’m a hungry driver, I’m really hungry for success again and I’m really keen to see how good I could be,” he said.“I think I can do a great job now in a good car, but there’s no point in talking about it too much.”
Kovalainen started his career with Renault but soon moved to McLaren the year team-mate Lewis Hamilton won the title in 2008, but managed only one race win himself at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Finn said he would see how the Caterham team developed this season before making any future moves.
“It’s possible, yeah, it’s possible (another move),” he said.“But at the moment I haven’t set any long term goals for myself and actually I don’t have a contract until after this year with anyone, I want to keep my options open.”
“If I see that this team is progressing like I think it should I think I’m happy to stay here.”
“There are many things that I’ve been able to achieve in this team that I didn’t achieve in the previous teams and that are working very well.”
“Probably after the start of the season at some point we’ll sit down – my management – with the people around me and we’ll sort of have a look; ‘Where are we? What do we think?’ And then we go from there,” he said.
Meanwhile, HRT driver Pedro De la Rosa will take over from Rubens Barrichello as the chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association for the upcoming season.
Barrichello lost his seat at Williams to Bruno Senna, paving the way for De la Rosa to return to chair the GDPA as he did from 2008-2010.
