HRT have surpassed their 2012 aims and objectives according to driver Pedro de la Rosa.
The Spanish team has struggled at the back of the pack and currently sits 12th and last, but it has managed to challenge its closest rival, Marussia, at times.
This, and the fact they failed to qualify in Australia but have since improved their one-lap pace, leads De la Rosa to believe the outfit is making great strides.
“My assessment is very positive because we set ourselves realistic targets, we’ve accomplished them and we’re, more or less, where we expected to be,” he said in a Q&A.
“We’ve still got to improve more and we have nine races ahead in which to do so.
“We’re accomplishing them and with flying colours at times,” he added. “We started outside the 107% in Australia and we’ve reached peaks of 103.6% in Monaco and our best qualifying result which was 103.4% in Valencia. That was a very ambitious target that we set ourselves because, for us, to be close to 104% is a realistic objective.”
The veteran expects further gains in the second half of the season to close the gap the mid-field runners.
“We’ve surpassed it and have potential to do more. In our case, it’s going to be easier to improve in this second half of the season than it will be for a big team that is striving for perfection because we’ve got much more room for improvement. For now we’ve accomplished our objectives but there are still many races to set ourselves more ambitious targets.”
Discussion about this post