Bruno Senna says that the HRT team has to find performance soon, having already shown that the Dallara-built car can be reliable by getting both examples to the finish in Malaysia.
Senna saw the chequered flag for the first time at Sepang after suffering early retirements in the first two races, while team mate Karun Chandhok also finished.
“As a team we’re quite happy,” Senna told this blog. “I think most of the big problems we have are being solved. There are still a few problems with fuel pick-up and this sort of thing which need to be solved for the next race, but performance will only come with updates and developments, so we need to focus on that. The team needs to sort this part out, and from then on I think we can start looking forward to competing with the other guys, because for the moment we’re a bit far behind.
“To be fair it’s a great achievement to finish a race with both cars. It’s a very reliable car considering how many miles it’s done and the conditions, but as well as reliability we want to have performance, and performance needs to come fairly soon. But we’re pushing very hard as a team.”
Senna hopes that the team will have a useful package for the first European race in Barcelona.
“We hope so. It’s hard to say exactly when the updates are going to come, but we hope we can have a few for Barcelona. For sure there are a few things that will come that will improve telemetry and comfort and all these things that are sometimes overlooked, but are very essential. And then the big things will come as they are ready.”
Meanwhile the biggest problem he faces is not losing too much time while being lapped, something that was a major concern in Malaysia.
“It took me about half the race to understand how to let the other cars overtake, I was losing a lot of time. We need to work a bit more on that. It’s better when we don’t have to let people past us more than once! Once or twice I was a bit close with cars overtaking, but you cannot always jump out of the way…”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
Lotus and Virgin (outside of their fuel issue updates) have been working on their aero upgrade packages for Barcelona from the start of the season at Bahrain, while this team is still trying to figure out what to do with the IP rights of the car and who will develop that car from here on…..
Colin Kolles rather naively mentions that they are going to rent a wind tunnel and start developing their upgrades themselves!! I just don’t get how that is possible within the time they have…..first they have to reverse engineer the aerodynamics of the car if they have to begin their own program as Geoff Willis mentioned…..I am not sure if Colin Kolles’ race operations team has the required number of aerodynamicists for an F1 program. And even if they have the head count in aero guys and manage to reverse aero map the car quickly, how can their upgrade packages which will be put together in a hurried fashion be anywhere as good as the upgrades of Virgin and Lotus?
With all this challenges to overcome, Colin Kolles wants us to believe that the team’s target is to be best of the new teams at the end of the year….yeah right….
This team looks like it going nowhere, which is a huge shame for the two real nice blokes driving those cars….they are just going to get dropped further and further back in speed as other teams out develop them. In fact, i would be surprised of the team makes it to the end of the season…..
So no new blogs since the 14th? You travel all the way to China to write about the race weekend, Correct? You can’t find one story that you feel is worth writing about?
How about Buemi’s suspension? Button outqualifying Hamilton for the third race in a row? Why is Ferrari’s F-Duct so differant from the others?
If I was the Chinese police I would keep a close eye on you because your up to something. The race is just a cover, I would suggest they give you a cavity search. 🙂