Sunday: the HRT progresses and sees the finish line
The HRT drivers, who finished the race in 21st and 22nd positions, commend the progress made by the Spanish team even though they regret having missed their start.
Pedro de la Rosa – 21st:
« I am happy with my race. It’s true that the start wasn’t great, but I was able to maintain a good pace afterwards, especially with the medium tires. We had an interesting battle with Kovalainen, which is always exciting, and at the beginning, we had the Marussia within sight for several laps.
However, I couldn’t catch up with them during the race, they were right there [in front of us] and with a few improvements, I’m confident we can be ahead of them.
We leave here with the impression of having made a big step forward and feeling that we are in the fight. The main takeaway is that we have improved in all areas: the stops are better every time, our pace is getting better, and the team is more united. It will be difficult to make a difference in Bahrain because there isn’t much time to introduce new developments, but we can make progress in team work and fine-tuning.
Narain Karthikeyan – 22nd:
« I also had a bad start, so we still have work to do with our starting system because it’s still new. It was quite difficult to drive with the soft tires because we had an issue and the car was moving a lot on the straight. We still need to identify the reason for it and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
But with the medium tires, the balance of the car was better, and it was easy to drive. We wanted to reach the finish here in China, and we succeeded, so we are thrilled about that. Now, we hope to make a bit more progress in Bahrain next week.
