De la Rosa: Crash was my mistake

Pedro de la Rosa has admitted the crash in Friday afternoon’s second practice session that left his team working hard to repair the car in time for Saturday’s track action was down to driver error.

Midway through the session the Spanish racer arrowed off track at Turn 14 of the Valencia Street Circuit and hit the barriers, badly damaging the front suspension.

“The session was going well but I made a mistake and went off track which, unfortunately, damaged the entire front suspension,” he said. “My session ended there and we were unable to test either the soft tyres or other things which we had in mind, but I’m keeping the positive aspect which is that we improved the car. I’m well and my mechanics are already repairing the car. They’re extraordinary professionals and tomorrow everything will be ready again to give it our best go once more in front of our home fans.”

De la Rosa added, however, that the team had improved the performance of his HRT’s brakes, which caused his retirement from the Canadian Grand Prix a fortnight ago.

“In the first session our weakest point was braking, as we were blocking the front and rear tyres,” he said. “We improved notably in the afternoon after making some changes and you could feel it straight away.”

The improvement was confirmed by team principal Luis Perez-Sala.

“We knew from Melbourne, that our brake ducts were not perfect,” he said. “We knew that Montreal was the biggest, maybe most difficult track for the brakes and here [in Valencia] is one as well – one of the tracks were you can have problems with the brakes. But the data that we have this morning suggests we are going to be close to the limit but inside the limit.”