HRT Japanese GP - Suzuka race report

HRT F1 Team has taken another step forward today at the Japanese Grand Prix by finishing the 53 lap race at Suzuka without any incidents. Daniel Ricciardo completed a solid race, improving his pace lap by lap and setting his best personal lap time four laps from the end.

Vitantonio Liuzzi

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

The 22 year old Aussie rookie finished in 22nd place although he had an interesting fight with his closest rivals which was settled at the very end. His teammate, Vitantonio Liuzzi, faced more adversity given that 14 laps in practice sessions meant that he was unable to fine tune his car’s set up as he would have liked and finished the race in 23rd. With no time to lose the team moves directly on to Korea where the 16th Grand Prix of the season will take place next week.

Vitantonio Liuzzi:

“It was a really tough race where we paid the consequences for hardly doing any laps on Friday and Saturday. We went into the race with a bit of a blind set-up. We suffered massive degradation with the rear tyres, especially the rear left, and I wasn’t able to do many laps with any set of tyres. At the beginning it wasn’t too bad and I was able to fight the drivers ahead but once I passed a few laps I had to pit. It was a massive fight and reaching the finish line was the most positive aspect of the day”.

Daniel Ricciardo, HRT

Photo by: xpb.cc

Daniel Ricciardo:

“The race went quite well considering yesterday’s pace, we’ve got to be happy about being only a few tenths behind the Virgins. At one stage I was in front but the safety car didn’t help. It came out at times that didn’t suit us. But I’m happy with the performance and, personally, I’m pleased with the way I drove and I don’t think I could have done much more. The car was good; with every run we made adjustments that improved it. I’m happy for the team because it was a strong race for us. We made good progress since the last few races we’ve had incidents in the first few laps so I’m satisfied to have had a clean race”.

Colin Kolles, Team Principal:

“Overall, today's race has been what we were hoping for: a race without major problems and fighting the Virgins, which we did. Daniel kept a good pace from the beginning and fought both D'Ambrosio and especially Glock throughout the race. With the blue flags and traffic we ended up behind them but all in all Daniel did a very good race and took another step forward.

After a difficult weekend, Tonio and his crew went to the race with very little information and track time and he did his best to push the car lap by lap and get to the end. There isn't much else he could do. This race is over and Korea is coming right next week and I hope that we won't have any of the problems we faced this weekend".

Weather: Maximum temperature: Air 24ºC, Track 35ºC - Sunny
Race: 53 laps
Track distance: 5,807 km

Vitantonio Liuzzi - F111-002 #23 - 23rd
Daniel Ricciardo - F111-003 #22- 22nd