HRT’s new reserve driver, Christian Klien, has had his first experience with the recalcitrant car on Friday and the conclusion is not good.
“Obviously this car is not quite on an F1 standard – there is just a lack of downforce big time that the car has,” said Klien in Barcelona. “Also the small details on the car are not as good as the top cars, so it is quite easy to get in the car and tell the engineers many things on where the other cars are better.
“For me it was quite clear after the first 20 laps what the major problems with the car were, and hopefully with more and more feedback we can improve the car. I think even without putting new stuff on the car there is still lap time in the car.
It seems, accordign to AUTOSPORT, that the HRT is no where near F1 standards and while that may not be shocking news for us, it does remind us that perhaps Geoff Willis’s scathing comments regarding the Dallara chassis might have some merit.
Klien is a veteran driver who does understand what an F1 car should feel like and his criticism is certainly warranted. The team had signed two rookies as their main drivers and while Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok are both good chaps, Klien may be a better litmus test in determining the gap between the current car and what an F1 car should be like.
The question now is, does the team work on the 2010 car’s development or do they stop and focus on the 2011 car?
“The question is how much money you want to put in this car,” he explained. “It is quite clear that you are not going to win anything with this chassis, so you need to build a new car from scratch basically.
“But the season is still quite long, and the team – at least I got that feeling this week – they still want to improve this car. And I think there is half a second to one second in this car that you can improve without putting expensive new parts on the car.”
Not a glowing review by anyone’s measure.
