Hispania Racing splits with Dallara

"Hispania Racing, and Dallara Automobili S.p.A have agreed that what they have achieved in such a short period of time was more than could have been reasonably expected. The two parties wish each other the best of luck in all future endeavours."

So ends a strange episode in F1. Dallara was originally hired by Campos Meta to design, build and develop a chassis for the 2010 season. But when Campos ran into financial trouble in February, the team was taken over in a last minute deal by Jose Ramon Carabante and his chosen team principal Colin Kolles was never happy with the Dallara arrangement. Today it has ended.

Kolles plans to build his own car, probably in Germany, for next season.

The Dallara chassis has been the weakest of the three new teams and the gap between it and its peers has increased as Virgin Racing and Lotus have improved their cars and moved closer to the established teams. Today's press release notes that Dallara has done no development work on the car since the first race.

It's not been easy for Dallara, who were never sure whether the team would make it to the first race. There was no shakedown test prior to the Bahrain Grand Prix and the first laps that Karun Chandhok's car turned were in qualifying.

Has the episode damaged Dallara? Well it certainly wasn't helpful to them for Geoff Willis, who is acting as a consultant to Kolles with a view to possibly taking over as technical director of Hispania, to come out and say that the car was very poorly made in his view.

That said, the ART Grand Prix team is hoping to graduate to F1 next season and its owners Nicolas Todt and Frederic Voissard said recently that they were looking for a chassis partner as they do not have the manufacturing capabilities in France. Having worked extensively with Dallara in GP2, they must be on the list.