British GP: HRT Friday practice report

At the tenth race of its short history, Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team, made its debut at the “Home of British Motor Racing” in Silverstone. In the morning session, Karun Chandhok ended up on position 22 clocking a best lap time of 1.38.735 and his teammate Sakon Yamamoto, who is celebrating his 28th birthday today, finished 24th with a lap time of 1.39.673. Both drivers could improve their lap times in the second practice and in total, the Indian and the Japanese added 107 laps on the team’s tally. At the end of the afternoon session, Karun Chandhok was 22nd (1.37.019) and Sakon Yamamoto 23rd (1.38.303).

After the second practice, Bruno Senna said that he respects the team’s reasons, thanked for the support and is now looking forward to get back to his seat in the German GP at Hockenheim in two weeks.

Dr Colin Kolles, Team Principal:

“’We are quite happy with our performance today. Everything worked well and with the small technical changes we could improve our cars. Both of our drivers, Karun Chandhok and Sakon Yamamoto, could do many laps in the practice sessions. Sakon showed a good performance as well even tough not being in a Formula 1 car for many years. It was the first time for him to drive on the option tyres and it was not easy for him to improve his lap times on this tyre. But now he knows how the tyres are working and he is prepared for the next sessions.”

Karun Chandhok:

“It was a very productive day for me today. We did a lot of work with the suspension to improve the car over the bumps. This afternoon especially we made some good progress with the rear end and were able to do a good comparison between the two tyre compounds. Our gap to the other teams is about where we expected coming into the weekend so let’s see how tomorrow goes. I always enjoy driving around Silverstone and despite the bumps it was fun to drive here in a Formula 1 car for the first time.”

Sakon Yamamoto:

“It was a brilliant day for me being back in Formula 1 since 2007, especially as it is my birthday today. It is the first time for me to run on a Friday afternoon after I was running for Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team in Istanbul in practice session one. Today, we could follow our program and everything was going quite well. I tried to understand the differences between the prime and the option tyres because it is the first time for me to drive on the option tyre. But we are well prepared for tomorrow.”

-source: hrt