HRT have requested permission from the FIA to participate in Sunday’s race, despite failing to make the 107% qualifying cut.
Pedro de la Rosa could only manage a 1:33.495 whilst his teammate Narain Karthikeyan, was a further tenth and a half back, leaving both drivers over a second off the required 1:32.214.
“We knew it would be tough coming into Australia but today’s result is hugely disappointing for any driver, there’s no doubt about that,” said Karthikeyan.
“We can try and come up with excuses but, at the end of the day, we lacked pre-season running time.
“We were up against it from the word go and yesterday’s weather wasn’t good which resulted in us losing a lot of dry running, hurting us badly. We’ve had a lot of issues with the car, which is something normal during pre-season, but the problem is that this weekend was our own particular pre-season and we were fighting against the clock.”
The team failed to qualify for the same race in 2011 and didn’t partake in the race that year.
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