Wheel nut problem ends HRT’s hopes of beating Virgin

2011 Turkish GP team review

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HRT’s upgrade showed potential in Turkey.

But a wheel problem for Vitantonio Liuzzi kept them from beating their rivals.

Narain KarthikeyanVitantonio Liuzzi
Qualifying position2220
Qualifying time comparison (Q1)1’31.564 (+0.872)1’30.692
Race position2122
Laps55/5853/58
Pit stops34

HRT drivers’ lap times throughout the race:

Narain Karthikeyan

Stopped with a problem in the wet first practice session.

Despite the upgrades to the F111 Karthikeyan was slowest in qualifying again. Kamui Kobayashi’s stoppage and Jerome D’Ambrosio’s penalty elevated him to 22nd.

Liuzzi’s problems meant he finished behind his team mate but almost a minute behind D’Ambrosio.

Narain Karthikeyan 2011 form guide

Vitatonio Liuzzi, Jerome D'Ambrosio, Istanbul, 2011

Vitantonio Liuzzi

Out-qualified Timo Glock and started in front of the other Virgin as Jerome D’Ambrosio was given a penalty.

But D’Ambrosio overtook Liuzzi on lap nine and began to pull away from the HRT.

Liuzzi’s hopes of beating him were dashed at his first pit stop when a wheel gun problem meant a wheel nut was lost and Liuzzi had to come in again for another stop on the next lap.

However his lap times showed HRT’s upgrade have brought them closer to Virgin.

He said: “We’ve shown an improvement in our performance and had good pace on Friday and Saturday proving that the gap has closed with Virgin.

“In the race we need to try and understand what we did wrong, we had a problem with both front tyres and need to work on this to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the next race.”

Vitantonio Liuzzi 2011 form guide

2011 Turkish Grand Prix

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    Author information

    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    15 comments on “Wheel nut problem ends HRT’s hopes of beating Virgin”

    1. Sorry but there’s an error somewhere in here.

      Liuzzi’s problems meant he finished in front of his team mate but almost a minute behind D’Ambrosio.

      But didn’t he finish behind his team mate according to the stats above?

      1. Yes, that should have said ‘behind’. Thanks.

        1. I actually understood it differently. Seeing as this was in the Karthikeyan section, I assumed that “he” referred to Karthikeyan, rather than Liuzzi, and therefore that “in front of” was correct…

    2. A team that was “a waste of grid space” in Australia. And here they are, getting close to virgin. I think if they can keep up their form, they could beat Virgin in the championship again this year. Go HRT!

      1. yeah i agree. very pleased to see HRT seemingly close up the gap to their nearest competition.
        Also question Keith, interestingly enough i saw that one of the teams was complaining of only actually getting 41 seconds of visual time on air in china… could the team have been HRT? because throughout FP1 and FP2 they were shown a lot more than i think i saw them for the whole of last season!!

        1. Nah they had two cars running. I imagine it was virgin

      2. Liuzzi’s merit.

    3. At least theres some consolation for HRT and Liuzzi in knowing they weren’t the only ones to have tyre changing issues with wheel nuts this weekend.

    4. Last year three new teams are almost in same order. Now Lotus is closing to the slowest established team(whoever it is), HRT is closing to Virgin. It’s much more interesting.

    5. That lap time graph is pretty interesting. Looks like it doesn’t matter how much fuel HRT has onboard, the speed (or lack of) is pretty consistent.

    6. What HRT is doing is that they are racing only with Virgin & vice verse.Look at Lotus they are confident to give a hard time to the mid runner.

    7. Tough luck for Liuzzi, he’s making the most the the car’s upgrades in qualifying ahead of Glock, hope to see him with better luck in Monaco, where he’s always raced well.

    8. I’d wondered what happened to Liuzzi. There was not mention of his problem on SPEED, but the result showed him finishing 2 laps down on his team mate which I was a bit confused about.

    9. It looked promising for HRT but just not to be…yet. Karthikeyan isn’t doing much for me.

    10. The New Pope
      11th May 2011, 4:42

      This is a cool spot.

    Comments are closed.