HRT Spanish GP Friday Practice Report

First day of practice sessions in the Spanish Grand Prix

Montmeló, 20th of May of 2011 - Circuit de Catalunya

Colin Kolles, Hispania Racing Team Principal:

Narain Karthikeyan, Hispania Racing Team, HRT

Photo by: xpb.cc

“The timesheet doesn’t look too good today but I’m positive because I know what we have done and I think tomorrow we will see the real performance of the car. We only did long runs and were not running on low levels of fuel. We were working on race setup and concentrating on this so the times today were quite irrelevant. We had aerodynamical updates and had to evaluate them, the feedback from the drivers and engineers suggest that they’re working just fine”.

Narain Karthikeyan, Driver #22:

“We had some issues with traction and a lot of oversteer this morning on prime tyres. In the afternoon we changed this a bit and it calmed down. We’re trying to work on the new parts, we have some new bits coming tomorrow as well so, as a whole package, we should improve a bit from today. The balance was completely different from winter so we have to re-balance the car, look at the data and improve. There is a lot of work to do”.

Vitantonio Liuzzi, Driver #23:

Vitantonio Liuzzi, Hispania Racing Team, HRT

Photo by: xpb.cc

“Today was a positive day overall. We had some time to do a few long runs and understand the tyres and get a better feel for the car. We had two interesting sessions where we spent a lot of time tuning the set up of the car. Both cars had different packages so it was important that Narain and myself focused on different aspects. We’ve got some important data for tomorrow. I’m positive that with the full upgrade on the car we’ll make a positive step”.

10.00-11.30 FORMULA 1 PRACTICE SESSION 1
Narain Karthikeyan F111-03 #22 24th (25 laps) 1:32.106
Vitantonio Liuzzi F111-02 #23 22nd (23 laps) 1:31.268
Maximum temperature: Air 22ºc, Track 28ºC – Sunny

14.00-15.30 FORMULA 1 PRACTICE SESSION 2
Narain Karthikeyan F111-03 #22 23rd (28 laps) 1:29.469
Vitantonio Liuzzi F111-02 #23 24th (31 laps) 1:29.476
Maximum temperature: Air 24ºC, Track 44ºC – Sunny

Source: HRT