Hispania had a tricky Friday at their second home grand prix with reliability problems hitting both cars, hampering their practice programmes.
Christian Klien was in Karun Chandhok’s car for the first of the two sessions today and suffered a gear box problem which prevented the Austrian test and reserve driver from completing the session. “It was a new circuit for me and in the first laps I had to learn the track, which was very dusty in the beginning,” said Klein. “But the conditions got better and I could improve my lap times.
“In the end, it is disappointing as I only could do 14 laps in my second session for Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team. We had a gearbox problem on the car and that's why I had to stop before the end of the session.”
Karun Chandhok didn’t have a trouble free afternoon though when he took control of Car No. 20. “It was quite a tricky day for us,” explained the Indian driver. “The first two sectors were good for us but then we had a hydraulic problem in sector 3 on the option tyre run so no representative ultimate lap time for me.
“We will have to look at Bruno to judge our pace and it definitely looks like we could be in decent shape to compete with Virgin cars tomorrow. The tyre degradation wasn’t as bad as Montreal and the option tyre was more consistent as expected.
“The track will improve a bit more tomorrow so hopefully we can have a productive FP3 and prepare well for qualifying and race in front of our team’s home crowd.”
Judging by Bruno Senna’s summary of the day, Chandhok didn’t miss out on much valuable practice by missing the morning session. “The first session was difficult because of the track conditions,” said the Brazilian. “It was very slippery and therefore not easy to drive. But the grip level improved in the afternoon and the lap times got better. We could do our quickest lap on the option tyres and now we have to focus on the qualifying.”
Team Principal Colin Kolles said that the fact the two regular drivers ended the day 23rd and 24th was not important. “Today's results were not significant for us because we concentrated on our works for tomorrow and Sunday,” he explained. “In the morning session, Christian Klien had a gearbox problem and Bruno Senna a problem with a drive boot.
“As a precaution, we investigated the problem Christian had in the morning on Bruno's car and that's why Bruno started late into the second session. But at the end of the second practice, we could already work on the program for tomorrow and for Sunday.”
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