Caterham clung on to 10th place in the Constructors' Championship, and the reported £10m plus prize money that goes with it, right at the last in 2012 after a tense end to the season at the back of the Formula 1 grid.
While Vitaly Petrov's late pass on then Marussia driver Charles Pic for 11th place at Interlagos was greeted with palpable relief by all concerned in green and yellow, in truth holding position in the pecking order had been the minimum target for the Tony Fernandes-owned team going into year three of the project to establish themselves as an F1 force.
Having rebranded as Caterham for 2012 after two controversial years under the Lotus banner, and with a move to the heart of F1's motorsport valley in Leafield completed over the summer break, hopes were high that it would be the year that the team finally opened their points account.
However, a few exceptions aside - notably in Valencia where Heikki Kovalainen put the team in Q2 for the first time on pure performance in the dry - the hoped-for breakthrough into the midfield failed to materialise and the team actually ended the season having to fend off rejuvenated rivals Marussia.
Last season also witnessed something of a changing of the guard as the two men who had been central in setting the team up from scratch in Norfolk in late 2009, Fernandes and technical chief Mike Gascoyne, stepped back from day-to-day control of the F1 outfit to focus on their wider business interests and the ever-expanding Caterham Group respectively.
Cyril Abiteboul joined the team from engine suppliers Renault mid-way through the year and was promoted to Team Principal by the closing weeks of the season, with his task to now oversee the team's next stage of development up the grid.
With a Renault power unit and KERS system, and the experienced hand of ex-McLaren man John Iley guiding the team's aerodynamic programme on the CT02, Caterham are aware their fourth year on the grid has to be significantly better than what has gone before.
