HRT has finally launched its 2011 car in the Barcelona pit lane, but without any pre-season testing, its livery looks closer to mobile advertising panels rather than a formula 1 car.The car’s distinctive livery was designed by Daniel Simon of Cosmic Motors and is completely identical with the studio photoshoot thta were published in order to attract sponsorship. However. apart from Narain Karthikeyan's TATA sponsoring no other major sponsoring appears in the car. Little sponsorship invitation messages like "Your logo here" and "it could be you" still remain on as Vitantonio Liuzzi didn't attract any personal sponsors after signing to drive for the team.
Only the popular F1fanatic blog decided to create its one sponsored HRT livery.
The F111 was designed by Geoff Willis and Paul White will have an adjustable rear wing although it wont embed a Kinetic Energy Recovery System.
Team president Jose Ramon Carabante commented:
“We feel really proud of the car our drivers will run this forthcoming season.
Despite a challenging first year, we managed to finish on the 11th position in the World Constructors Championship. Now, we are very pleased to introduce the first specification of the F111, which means a huge design-effort from our side.
This is only a first step as we are planning several updates during the season.”
Team boss Colin Kolles insist the car would run as soon as possible, with initial checks set to be performed in the garage on Friday afternoon.
"There are a small amount of parts that are in customs. We hope we can get them out somehow. The plan is to run tomorrow, or as soon as possible basically. We will do systems checks, fire ups - the sooner the better. It's aerodynamically completely different - this is very obvious," Kolles added. "The simulations show that the car should be quicker than last year's car and we hope to make a step forward. We've worked very hard, Geoff and all the engineers worked very hard, and also production worked very hard to finish it in a very short time. I think we will be in Australia quite well prepared."
Kolles is also confident that the team will not fall foul of the 107% qualifying rule which has returned to F1, requiring from drivers to acheive qualifying time within 107% of the pole lap in order to make the grid, but could not say for sure until the car hits the track.
"I am confident. I think we have the drivers to do the 107%, I think the car is quicker than last year's car. In testing our old car has shown that it was closer to the established teams, we will see. I cannot answer this question at the moment. In simulation the car looks quicker than last year's car, which is all I can say."
