Hispania Racing Team to give Narain Karthikeyan a full run in 2012 – Formula 1 news
Hispania Racing Team announced Narain Karthikeyan as a race driver for the 2012 season and have stated that he will be given a full season run.
HRT did however mention that the race seat should not be taken for granted but to give the team more consistency and stability they have decided to give the Indian driver a full run at the upcoming season.
During the 2011 season Karthikeyan was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo midway, but HRT under new management have suggested that will not be the case for this season. Team principal Luis Perez-Sala said the plan to give Karthikeyan and his teammate Pedro de
la Rosa a go at all the 20 races will give a positive result for the team.
“The idea as of now is to race him [Karthikeyan] the whole season, but nothing is taken for granted in F1, you have to work for your place in every race,” Perez-Sala told the Indo Asian News Service. “But as things stand, Karthikeyan and Pedro will race
the entire season.”
HRT had a poor showing in the 2011 season finishing 11th in the constructors’ championship. The team is not expected to do much better in 2012 but it is still early time to judge the team as it has not been around for too long.
The team is undergoing some trouble with their new challenger as well as their car failed to pass the compulsory crash tests. The failure resulted in HRT missing on the first pre-season test and will miss the second as well at Barcelona.
Although if the team can get its car ready before the third and last test and perform good running during the testing days they may still be on track for improvement in the season as most teams look out of sorts in the build-up to the season with the new
regulations taking effect which bans the off-throttle blown diffuser.
“If we can stay ahead of Marussia, we will be happy and if we get closer to Caterham, then we will be delighted, but our first objective is to get things under way, improve on reliability and progress as the season advances,” Perez-Sala added.
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