HRT confident on qualifying within 107% rule

After a disastrous season-opener in Australia last weekend, things are now starting to look up for the HRT team, as they set times within the 107% rule during FP2 and continued to improve as the day went on. Although Karthikeyan suffered from some hydraulic issues, the general feeling is positive within the HRT camp.

"We’ve worked very hard these past days to fix the issues we encountered in Australia.” Explained the teams Chief Race Engineer, Toni Cuquerella, “Today was a normal Friday and a good day to validate the car’s systems. The priority is for the car to work and we checked that the DRS functioned without problems and resolved the majority of the hydraulic issues. We took another step forward on the track today and improved our lap times, but we’ve still got to improve a lot to make up for the time we lost with respect to our rivals. Tomorrow we will continue to work on optimizing cooling in race distance but, generally, we are satisfied with how the day went”.

The team completed a total of 66 laps during todays running, and with only minor hydraulic issues on Karthikeyan’s car, the day was very satisfactory for the team. With obvious reliability improvements, the Spanish outfit will now be hoping they can qualify within the 107% rule.

“For the first time we were able to try out different solutions on this car,” explained Pedro de la Rosa, “The DRS is working, the power steering has improved from Australia and, although we’re not where we would like to be, we’ve taken a considerable step forward. The sensations improved as the day wore on and the car behaved better from the morning to the afternoon.”

However, Narain Karthikeyan has spoken of cooling issues on the car, something which can have a devastating effect, especially in the Malaysian heat.

"In the morning session we suffered some reliability issues, the same as in Melbourne but not as bad and we’ve also got some cooling issues too.” Said Narain Karthikeyan, “In the afternoon these issues persisted on turns 13 and 14 where I wasn’t able to select the gears properly but the important thing is that we’re within the 107% time and can continue to improve and be in better conditions.”

The team will be hoping these improvements continue over the weekend, and that they can qualify for their first race of 2012.

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