As the second of the three all-new teams that made their Formula One debuts in Bahrain at the start of the 2010 season, HRT emerged in the bright sunlight of the Kingdom after a rollercoaster ride to even reach the grid.
It’s new Dallara-built F110 cars just in time to bring them to Bahrain – first turning a wheel on Friday’s Free Practice session for the race. The team’s triumph against adversity to reach Bahrain on time was to be its highlight of 2010, as its original driver line-up of Indian ace Karun Chandhok and Brazilian star Bruno Senna – with appearances by test drivers Sakon Yamamoto and Christian Klien – brought little forward progress.
For 2011 HRT built a new car, the F111, designed within the team by Geoff Willis for a new driver line-up of India’s Narain Karthikeyan and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi. Another season ended without a point and once again HRT underwent significant changes over the winter as team principal Colin Kolles and designer Willis departed and the entire team moved from Valencia to new premises in Madrid in early 2012.
Spanish former Formula One driver Luis Perez-Sala has now replaced Kolles at the head of the team, while Spain’s experienced test and race driver Pedro de la Rosa comes to this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix as the lead driver with Narain Karthikeyan restored to a full-time drive alongside him.
The new F112 was based on Willis’s work but overseen by new technical director Jacky Eeckelaert. Delays in the construction of the new car meant that once again a nervous start to the year and initially it failed the mandatory crash tests required to ensure safety.
Having just passed the tests in time to make the start of the 2012 season in Australia, neither of the HRT entries was able to start the race after failing to set a lap time within 107% of pole position. This hurdle was cleared at the second race in Malaysia, with de la Rosa heading Karthikeyan to the back row of the grid and finishing 21st and 22nd.