HRT’s Ramon Carabante admits having a low budget, says Virgin and Lotus on hit-list: Formula 1
Hispania Racing Team (HRT) owner Ramon Carabante has admitted that the team are on a low budget, even lower than last year’s budget, which hindered their 2011’s car development. Carabante said that many sponsors were lost at the start of 2011. He hoped that
in May 2011 they will have enough resources and manpower to beat their rival teams, Virgin and Team Lotus.
The Hispania team is moving into their second season and they still don’t seem to have a solid plan to at least become a competitor in Formula 1. Last year they used four drivers, Karun Chandhok, Bruno Senna, Sakon Yamamoto and Christian Klien. None of the
driver were able to score a point. HRT ended 11th on the constructor’s tables in the 2010 season and were just ahead of the Virgin team. Talking about last year’s performance Carabante said, “Last year we were in a worse condition than now and we
ended up ahead of Virgin with twice our budget, and behind Lotus due only to one accident.”
In 2011, HRT’s driver’s line-up is Karun Chandhok and Vitantonio Liuzzi who failed to participate in the season’s first Grand Prix because they were unable to qualify under the 107 percent rule. Carabante was depressed about the performance but said that
Liuzzi only did 11 laps and was behind the pace sitter’s 107 % time by merely two seconds. Carabante added that had Liuzzi completed 20 odd laps, he would have qualified for the race.
Talking about the budget issues, Carabante confirmed that the team is on a low budget, even lower than the last year. “We were closing (sponsor) agreements that in the end did not come. So we set a realistic goal with the budget that we had.”
The next race starts in less than a week and HRT are not setting any targets for that race. It will be interesting to see how a low budgeted HRT team performs in the Malaysian Grand Prix against established teams with very large cash flow.
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