Senna: “We are competing against our ourselves”

Bruno Senna says that the Australian GP was a good weekend for the HRT team, despite his own early retirement. The Brazilian insists that the fact that Karun Chandhok made it to the finish is a boost that the team hadn’t expected from the early races of the year. In addition the cars were also pretty close to the Virgins on qualifying pace, something that hadn’t been anticipated after Bahrain. 

“We had some really silly hydraulic failure again, some small component that failed,” Senna told this blog. “But it’s very encouraging for us that Karun finished the race, because we shouldn’t expect to finish any of these first few races where we are just testing. My car has only done around 200kms, so not even a Grand Prix distance on the engine.”

Having started from the pitlane in Bahrain, Bruno did at least have his first experience of being on an F1 grid in Australia.

“I had a pretty decent start, and the competitive side always makes a difference. It’s always nice to be on the grid, even if it’s not the position you want to be in.

“I was quite careful into the first corner because everything was happening, I could see how things were transpiring so I decided to be a bit more careful, and I lost one of the positions I made on the start. There was no point, we are competing against ourselves, competing against our problems and other things, so it was better to try and finish the race.

“It’s a very tricky circuit in the wet, and grip levels were very low, and you could see everybody was struggling a little bit. Even though it was difficult I would have loved to have been a bit longer in the race and tried to put some pressure on somebody in front of me.”

Despite the disappointments, Bruno can see signs of progress.

“We’re getting there. It’s just a question of getting the car to work, because we haven’t had time to put the car on the rig and make a base set-up. The front and the rear are not connected! It becomes very inconsistent, it’s just a car that’s not been set-up yet, and only with time can we achieve that. For Europe, that’s when we can be looking at it.”