Pedro de la Rosa is confident that HRT will meet the mandatory 107% regulation to qualify in Malaysia after improvements to its car.
The Spanish team were pushed for time in Australia and that, coupled with some additional issues, meant that both cars failed to meet the minimum requirements to qualify to race the next day.
De la Rosa however, believes the addition of DRS – which didn’t work in Melbourne, and the solutions to its power steering problems will give the team the necessary time deficit to qualify.
“It is not only the fact that we will have DRS here, which we didn’t in Australia [but] we seem to have found the issues with the power steering, which is massively important,” he explained.
“The whole team has had one more week to build the cars with more attention to detail really, so I am more confident than Australia.”
The veteran is hopeful that the DRS will provide up to a second of laptime around Sepang which features many long straights.
“DRS itself is approximately nine tenths to one second, so it is quite a big help especially where we are, and what we need to qualify. That extra second could make a difference.”
