Hispania Racing Team’s Narain Karthikeyan to miss season-opener, F1 Australian Grand Prix
Narain Karthikeyan has not qualified for the season opener of Formula 1 as his team Hispania Racing was unable to perform up to the mark of the 107 percent rule.
For Karthikeyan and his partner Vitantonio Liuzzi the qualifying session ended with bad news as they failed to clear the cut-off time as they were more than seven per cent slower than Red Bull’s pole winner Sebastian Vettel.
The cut-off time for the session was 1:31.266, Liuzzi missed the time by 1.712 seconds and Karthikeyan was worse with a difference of 3.027.
HRT had failed to test their car in the pre-season and assembled their car in Melbourne test session after making an exemption request. They insisted on special circumstances for being responsible of the poor times but FIA turned it down and disqualified the
team from Sunday's race.
Paul di Resta, Force India’s driver will commence from the 14th place on the grid, while Adrian Sutil the team's second driver is two places below on the grid as he gyrated his car at the final turn before he ended the race. His car spun at 360°
coming out of the conclusive bend, barely missing a wall while fading in tyre smoke, but he recovered his charge to end the lap.
Sebastian Vettel, the Red Bull defending champion will start from pole position after an overassertive race by the qualifying session of the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday.
Vettel’s time was above three-quarters of a second faster than his closest McLaren opponent Lewis Hamilton.
The Australian driver Mark Webber starts at the third position on the grid, with McLaren’s Jenson Button starting in the fourth place as he endeavours to secure the race title for a third year in a row.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso who missed Vettel qualified fifth, 1.4 seconds adrift of Vettel, while team-mate Felipe Massa did not show a promising performance ending at the eighth position. Seven times World Champion Michael Schumacher occupied a disappointing
11th place on the grid.
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