Hispania's new motor completes the 2011 grid
- Published on Mar 11th, 2011 by Jack LamureWill last to launch mean first to finish? In this case we can be pretty sure it won't, with 2010 strugglers Hispania becoming the final team to unveil their new car in Barcelona today.
The Spanish squad were comfortably the slowest last year, with an under-developed car and a pair of rookie drivers (and subsequently Sakon Yamamoto) not proving the ideal formula for F1 success. Despite this however they ended the year 12th in the constructors championship, beating Virgin Racing by dint of three 14th place finishes.
This year they have a new car, the F111, the design of which was led by former BAR and Red Bull man Geoff Willis. It should be noted however that the new machine looks rather similar to last year's car - not the best start. The team also boast a flashy new livery this season, created by Hollywood designer Daniel Simon, with phrases such as 'your logo here' and 'cool spot' included where the team hope sponsors will eventually place their logos.
Photo: HRT F1 Media
On the driver front Tonio Liuzzi signed on yesterday to partner India's Narian Karthikeyan for 2011. The Italian does at least bring recent F1 experience and can, on his day, deliver solid results.
However that looks like being very difficult this year, with Hispania yet to run their new car at all during pre-season testing. They had hoped to get it out on track today but may be forced to delay its debut until tomorrow, with some parts still working their way to the Circuit de Catalunya. Still, one day of testing would be a lot more than they started 2010 with.
Photo: HRT F1 Media
Comments and Discussion
I can't believe they started the 2010 season without a single days testing! thats like Olympic skiers buying their skis from Go Outdoors on race day. Actually it reminds me of Cool Runnings, only not so comical and slightly more crash-and-burn-in-an-almighty-expensive-ball-of-firey.
Liking their new car but they are a joke of a team what team apart from them has 1 days testing possibly between 2 different cars from different seasons ?
Joke or not, Hispania still beat Virgin last year by breaking down less often. They might even have had a shot at beating Lotus had Jarno not attempted to mate his car to Chandhok's in Monaco.
I wouldn't class it as particularly unusual to have a team race in F1 with little-to-no testing. F1 fans have been spoilt over the past 10 years due to the amount of money flying around in the sport.
It feels a bit like we're now back to something akin to the early to mid-nineties era where smaller teams struggled and were on and off like kids on a roundabout. Not to mention the return of talentless pay-drivers. It's just something the newer generation of fans will have to get used to in these (apparently) difficult financial times.
Anyway. having said all that HRT will still be the centre of some form of entertainment at each race: will they beat the 107% time?!
Looking past the snazzy paintjob, the F111 looks remarkably similar to the F110; albeit with a new engine cover, different rear and front wing mountings, new nosebox, and probably the illegal bits snapped off from the diffuser.
Reminds me in spirit of the 1994 flop that was the Pacific PR01: Nice paintjob, terrible car:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2b/Pacific_Racing_1994.jpg/250px-Pacific_Racing_1994.jpg
Also considering how pendantic Ford were over the use of the F150 name, it's quite possible Colin Kolles will get a call from General Dynamics who will be paranoid that someone might mistake the HRT for their swing-wing twin-jet bomber.
Well said!
Whatever people may think of him, I believe signing Liuzzi was a very smart move from the team. After the Karthikeyan deal it looked like they'd have a very poor pairing, but Tonio knows all about driving for new teams (Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Force India were all very young when he raced for them) and whilst he's no world beater he's a solid professional racing driver. He'll do what the car is capable of - a big step up from Yamamoto.
A step up from Senna in my opinion too, though Tonio damaged his reputation last year with not always getting the most out of his car at every opportunity. Do you reckon Karthikeyan will be any more effective than Yamamoto?
More effective yes, though not necessarily any quicker. Karthikeyan's done so many series over the past few seasons - A1GP, NASCAR Trucks, Superleague, prototypes, the list goes on - that he's used to jumping in any car that's put in front of him and driving it. As such he's also not a bad guy to have on hand when talking setup. Compare that to Sakon who's only done a bit of GP2 between his stints in F1.
I wouldn't want to guess at how fast he'll be - though I'm sure most of us believe Liuzzi will be comfortably quicker - but he's definitely a step up from his pay-driver-predecessor.