Monaco GP: HRT Thursday report

HRT F1 Team's first laps on the street circuit at the legendary Monaco GP

1000 - 1130 FORMULA ONE PRACTICE SESSION 1
Bruno Senna F110-02 #21 23rd (28 laps) 1.21.688
Karun Chandhok F110-01 #20 24th (6 laps) 1.21.853 stopped

1400 - 1530 FORMULA ONE PRACTICE SESSION 2
Karun Chandhok F110-01 #20 23rd (36 laps) 1.20.313
Bruno Senna F110-02 #21 24th (11 laps) 1.22.148

One week after the Spanish Grand Prix of Spain the HRT F1 Team (Hispania Racing) is back in action making its debut on the streets of Monte Carlo for the 68th Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.

Both Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna were in action in today's two practice sessions covering 34 laps between them in the morning and further 47 laps in the afternoon.

Dr. Colin Kolles, Team Principal commented: "Our drivers paid a high price for a small mistake. But they will improve on Saturday. We did some good preparation work for the race, but we could not find the right balance to make the most of the tyres and achieve an optimal lap time. We have a good basis to build on ahead of qualifying."

Karun Chandhok commented: "It felt really good to be back and drive an F1 car around the streets of Monaco. I really enjoy driving on this circuit. We managed to go through our program today quite successfully on both tyres. I managed to get up to speed quite quickly and maintained that through the sessions. There is still a gap to the other new teams so we have to work on that. We are lucky that we have the whole day off tomorrow so will be sitting with my engineers working hard to find the right balance for qualifying on Saturday."

Bruno Senna commented: "I have been looking forward to driving here in Monaco again since my GP2 win a couple of years ago and here we are finally. Today we have been working very hard to make the car work as well as possible around this bumpy street circuit. It's not easy to be honest. The areas of car development needed on the 'normal' circuits we have raced on so far are magnified here in Monaco and the team has to work harder than ever to make the best of what we have got. I plan to get back on target on Saturday."

-source: hrt