F1's HRT in a world of hurt
New scoring rules were instituted before the start of the 2010 Formula 1 season in an attempt to give more teams the opportunity to gain points and see success for their results. Where the top eight drivers scored points at the end of each race in 2009, that number was expanded to 10 in 2010. The change has served its purpose: through the first 10 races of the Formula 1 season, 17 drivers have scored at least one point in competition.
However, none of those 17 drivers are the two drivers for the new HRT Team. Neither Karun Chandhok nor Bruno Senna has been able to crack the top 10 through the race at Silverstone. In fact, neither driver has come close to scoring points this season. The best that Chandhok has been able to muster has been a pair of 14th-place finishes in Australia and Monaco while Senna has yet to finish in the top 15 this year.
A rocky road
The team’s lack of success is hardly surprising considering the relative turmoil that spurred their inaugural season. Originally founded by former Formula 1 driver Adrian Campos as Hispania Racing, the team almost didn’t raise the funds needed to take its spot on the starting grid for the 2010 season. Campos was eventually bought out of the team by shareholder José Ramón Carabante, who also brought in Colin Kolles from Force India to replace Campos as the team principal.
The team had zero test sessions before the start of the season, meaning that the first time that Chandhok and Senna would have seat time behind the wheel of their new cars would be during the weekend of the season-opening race in Bahrain. These would be difficult circumstances for any driver but this was especially difficult considering that Chandhok and Senna were entering their rookie seasons and had never competed in a Formula 1 race. The fact that they qualified at the back of the grid is hardly shocking, nor was the fact that both drivers were out of the race within 17 laps.
A painful season
Things have hardly gotten better for the HRT Team this season. The team has filled out the back row of the grid after qualifying in five of the first 10 races in 2010. Simply put, the cars are not fast enough to contend with the other teams. The two HRT Team cars finished a full five seconds behind pole winner Sebastian Vettel in qualifying for the British Grand Prix. In fact, they were almost two seconds slower than Jarno Trulli, who qualified 21st.
However, it wasn’t Chandhok and Senna who were in the cars that made up the final row of the grid at Silverstone. The team made an abrupt change just before the start of practice for the British Grand Prix, pulling Senna out of the ride and giving it to test driver Sakon Yamamoto. The Japanese driver had two years of experience driving for Spyker and Super Aguri but had not competed in a race since 2007. Yamamoto finished 20th, although speculation swirled that Yamamoto was put into the ride at Silverstone because of the guaranteed sponsorship money he could bring while rumours floated that sponsors backing Senna had missed several payments to the team.
The HRT Team announced after Silverstone that Senna would be driving the rest of the season - a sign either that Yamamoto couldn’t get more out of the car than Senna or that some Brazilian cheques cleared. Either way, the team appears to be more interested in survival than results and is seemingly just hoping to make it to the off-season, where they can regroup, get on better financial footing and develop a plan to move out of the Formula 1 basement in 2011.
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