Both HRT F1 cars make grade in qualifying debut

HRT F1 Team , "Hispania Racing F1 Team"  

Third  Free Practice Session
Karun Chandhok  F110-01 #20
Bruno Senna        F110-02 #21 11 laps – 2.04.001

Qualifying
Bruno Senna 2.03.240 (6 laps)
Karun Chandhok 2.04.904 (7 Laps)


HRT F1 Team (Hispania Racing F1 Team) successfully completed its first laps in qualifying at the Bahrain Grand Prix with six laps for Bruno Senna (2.03.240) and seven for Karun Chandhok (2.04.904).

In the morning during the third first practice session, Bruno Senna had clocked an additional 11 laps to yesterdays 20 as HRT F1 Team  covered its first ever miles with its debut car, compared to its rival teams who had covered over 4,000km of testing in February.

Karun Chandhoks car suffered an additional hydraulic system failure and the team chose not to send him out in practice, instead focusing on making sure everything was in order for qualifying, when he successfully covered his first seven laps.
 
Having never run the car before this weekend, HRT F1 team was pleased to achieve its goal of covering mileage with both cars. The team will again be in action tomorrow for the race and start from the back of the grid as it bids to cover as many miles as possible.

Dr Colin Kolles commented, Our mechanics and engineers worked miracles and were  awake for 38 hours preparing for our first outing. Having never run the car before this weekend we have had the usual new car technical challenges which we would normally have solved during pre-season testing. But we are determined to work through this usual process as quickly as possible, even though it may well be in the public eye. In a way, we are treating this race as a test session and this is a great success for the entire team to even be here with both cars running.

On Monday we will go home with lots of important data and valuable information which we will be using for big steps forwards as the season moves on and hope to make consistent improvements. The focus today for the team was to run both cars on track. We are focused on safety, reliability and then performance will come. I would like to thank everyone for their dedication we have taken an historic first step.
 
 
Bruno Senna (car nr 21) commented, It was certainly a relief to continue to add laps to this car when others have already completed thousands of miles in testing, we only have 26 laps on board. We have already learned a lot and will continue to do so with every lap we complete. I want to congratulate again my mechanics, engineers and the whole team for their incredible hard work to ensure we are in a position to be racing tomorrow.

Karun Chandhok (car nr 20) commented, , I still cant believe that we will be on the grid tomorrow. It was not looking good in the morning and I was not sure if we would make it to the qualifying session as well. I didnt expect to be driving the car for the first time in qualifying but as I have always said these are the circumstances and we made the best of it.

For me it was just a string of installation laps and to finish just a second slower than Bruno is definitely a huge achievement. I think I might be the only driver in the history of F1 to go straight into a qualifying session of a race without even having done a shakedown of the car! Once again I think the team has done a brilliant job so am very grateful to them.
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- Heike Feldkamp -