HRT entered Silverstone hoping to make further gains on their nearest rivals, Marussia. Despite a shaky start to the season, the Spanish squad has made progress in recent races. With the experience of Pedro de la Rosa leading the team forwards – they were happy to out qualify Marussia's Charles Pic.
Additionally, due to a ten place grid penalty for Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne, de la Rosa will start tomorrow's race from twenty first on the grid.
“This was probably the toughest qualifying session, because you didn't know what you were going to find” said de la Rosa. “Towards the end of the session they asked me through the radio if I wanted to change to dry tyres and I looked up to the sky and didn't know what to go for because some parts of the track were dry, others wet…so we continued on intermediates and the strategy was to push on every lap as if it was the last one.
“As for tomorrow's race, there aren't many options because this is a high downforce track, both in wet and dry conditions. We used a set-up with a medium suspension, not too hard, because I doubt it will be a fully wet or fully dry race, so we have to be flexible,” the Spaniard explained.
Meanwhile, Narain Karthikeyan believed that the car had more pace in it had the weather stayed dry, but remains positive ahead of tomorrow's race and will start twenty second.
“”Qualifying was a big lottery because at some stages it was raining heavily in one part of the track and not on another. The car was really good in the dry this morning but English weather is very unpredictable and it turned things right around. We beat one Marussia, which is good, but we always want to do better.
These conditions are a gamble and for us it's better to race in wet conditions because anything can happen. You just need to stay calm and take the opportunities that present themselves,” Karthikeyan said.
