HRT plagued with returning brake issues at India

HRT once again suffered overheating brakes at the Indian Grand Prix, which ultimately stunted their progress and saw Pedro de la Rosa spin into retirement on lap 44. This recurring issue for the Spanish outfit is most worrying, as the next race at the Yas Marina circuit features equally high braking points around the track.

After slowly improving during each practice session at the beginning of the race weekend, HRT entered the Indian Grand Prix with high expectations. However, after only the third lap the duo of Narain Karthikeyan and Pedro de la Rosa began to endure the first signs of overheating brakes. This issue forced de la Rosa into retirement last time out at the Korean Grand Prix, and began to once again impede the teams progress as the race wore on.

With both Karthikeyan and de la Rosa giving way to reduce the brake temperatures throughout the race, the duo began to loose ground greatly to their nearest competitors at Marussia. Eventually, the overheating became too intense for de la Rosa’s machine as he spun off the track at turn four and lightly tapped the barriers. Luckily the car wasn’t too damaged, however the worrying issues remain a major talking point within the paddock.

"It’s a shame that I had to retire because the car was running well on the hard tyres but, with no warning, the brakes failed.” Explained Pedro de la Rosa, “We have to understand why this failure occurred and fix it because Abu Dhabi is another challenging circuit for the brakes.”

Although Pedro de la Rosa was forced into retirement due to the issues with the brakes, local hero Narain Karthikeyan was able to control the overheating and finish his home race for a second year in succession. Karthikeyan was at a further disadvantage in comparison to team-mate de la Rosa, after the 35-year-old lost a small piece of his front-wing during the opening lap.

"I got off to a good start but had an incident on the first corner and lost a chunk of my front wing.” Said Narain Karthikeyan, “The damage wasn’t too severe but we had problems with the balance of the car from then on. But the greatest problem was the overheating of the brakes. They warned me on the radio that I had to look after them because we had to make it to the end. And we did that.”

With next weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix set feature further high braking zones, HRT will be frantically searching the cause of this continuing issue on their cars. Luckily for de la Rosa, there was enough run off space to avoid a big collision. However, due to the semi-street circuit nature of Yas Marina, the same issue could have bigger repercussions it returns next weekend.

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