HRT had a positive qualifying session at India today. Pedro de la Rosa qualified twenty-second, with home favourite Narain Karthikeyan managing to out qualify Marussia’s Charles Pic for twenty-third.
“Although we didn’t find the lap we were hoping for, we did complete a very good qualifying session. With the first set of tyres the car performed very well and I was able to complete three clean laps. However, with the second set and with more rubber on the track when times could be improved significantly, I encountered a lot of traffic and I was unable to complete a clean lap. The car was better today than yesterday and we could’ve been even quicker but with the traffic it was impossible,” de la Rosa said.
“But the positive thing is that we qualified well at a difficult track and the car improved so I hope to achieve a better result tomorrow.”
Team mate Karthikeyan meanwhile was happy to enjoy a solid performance in front of his home crowd.
“Overall I’m happy with the performance we showed in the qualifying session. On my second run I made a mistake which cost me a couple of tenths but the large amount of cars on the track was the main problem as we didn’t find a gap to go as quick as we would have liked.”
“Despite this I’m happy because we finished ahead of one of the Marussias, my time was almost identical to Pedro’s and we’ve got good pace so we can be satisfied. The car has improved and tomorrow we will try to continue progressing to achieve a good result in front of my home crowd.”
