Narain sets sight on attacking Virgin

Apr 17, 2011 |

C. Santhosh kumar

chennai

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After successfully achieving their target of completing the race at the Chinese Grand Prix, minnows Hispania have set their sights on attacking Virgin Racing, another low-budget team in Formula One.

Hispania cars, which missed all the pre-season tests and failed to qualify for the season opening Australian GP, finished the 56-lap race at the Shanghai circuit without any reliability issues. Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi recovered from a drive-through penalty to finish 22nd, followed by his teammate Narain Karthikeyan, who showed great tyre management with a single-stop strategy.

The Indian driver said Hispania would be a lot more competitive when the season moves to Europe at Turkish GP on May 8. “The aerodynamics and mechanical upgrades for Istanbul will put us closer to the new teams (Virgin and Lotus). I don’t think Virgin cars are far ahead of us. Nothing is easy in Formula 1 but we are confident of closing the gap soon.”

Narain’s confidence stems from Hispania’s recently-signed windtunnel deal with Mercedes. The pact will help HRT develop their aerodynamics at Mercedes’ facility in Brackley.

Team principal Colin Kolles said the improvement of the HRT cars is for everyone to see. “We actually planned one-stop strategy for both the cars. Narain stuck to it, but Tonio had a drive-through penalty for a jump start and lost some positions so we switched to two-stop strategy for him. Tonio’s times were, however, impressive at the end.

He was doing similar times to the mid-field which is positive,” he added.

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