HRT didn’t make any inroads on rivals Marussia or Caterham in qualifying at Abu Dhabi today. Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan will start tomorrow’s race from twenty third and twenty fourth places respectively.
“We completed a good practice and qualifying session. I was comfortable in the car and I’m sure that I could have improved by a couple of tenths but surely the rest could have too. The car was running well and we had no problems with the temperature of the brakes or the engine at a circuit like this one which is so hot, so I’m happy,” de la Rosa said afterwards.
I think we’ve got good pace for tomorrow’s race and the first objective is to get off to a good start and keep close to the Marussias. We should try to go for one stop, hope for the rear tyres to hold out and try and put some pressure on our rivals.”
Narain Karthikeyan blamed his inexperience of the track on his poor performance.
“It was a tough qualifying session for me. It’s my first time racing in Abu Dhabi and, being such a technical circuit, I’m finding it tougher than expected. I didn’t manage to string together a good lap; I was running well on the first set of tyres but with the second set I found traffic and the rear tyres wore out before I could improve my time.”
“Although I’m not entirely comfortable at this circuit, tomorrow I will give everything like always to try and put in a good performance and finish the race.”
