Senna’s best finish (HRT race review)

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Thanks to the high number of retirements in Suzuka, Bruno Senna scored his best finish to date for HRT.

That keeps them ahead of Virgin in 11th place in the constructors’ championship.

Sakon YamamotoBruno Senna
Qualifying position2423
Qualifying time comparison (Q1)1’37.365 (+0.095)1’37.270
Race position1615
Average race lap1’49.404 (+1.123)1’48.281
Laps50/5351/53
Pit stops11

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Sakon Yamamoto

The new teams were very strung out at Suzuka: HRT were a second slower than Virgin and two seconds slower than Lotus.

The grey cars filled the back row, Yamamoto last, a tenth of a second slower than his team mate.

He moved up to 15th at the start as Jarno Trulli, Timo Glock and Senna all pitted. He kept Trulli behind until lap 14, when he made a mistake at turn two.

Glock made a couple of attempts to pass the Japanese driver but he defended his position until lap 31, when he pitted, leaving him last.

Compare Sakon Yamamoto’s form against his team mate in 2010

Bruno Senna

Scored his best finish to date with 15th, after pitting on lap one and running to the end on hard tyres.

Compare Bruno Senna’s form against his team mate in 2010

2010 Japanese Grand Prix

    Browse all 2010 Japanese Grand Prix articles

    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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    13 comments on “Senna’s best finish (HRT race review)”

    1. there were a lot of crashes, anyway this doenst erases klien singapore performance or any other of sennas defeats against chandok. Senna isnt f1 or le mans material since he wrecked his oreca 3 times a few years ago

      1. Oh come on. Did you even watch the GP2 season where Senna and Chandhok were team mates?

        And Senna has had his car fail on him far more times than anyone else this year (not his fault).

        In all honesty Chandhok and Senna didn’t get a chance to compete against each other in F1, the car either failed for Senna or Karun. When the car didn’t fail Senna was often a little quicker (just look at Keith’s stats).

        He has shown he has good speed in previous categories and finished above most of the new guys on the grid in GP2. Just look at the 2008 GP2 championship standings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_GP2_Series_season

        He also did well enough in testing for Honda for them to pretty much offer him a seat for 2009 alongside Button.

        He is a rookie in an appalling car. This season is pretty much void.

    2. Still, the speed differences are enormous. Lotus was again almost a second in front of Virgin and HRT was even further, with SAKON being a lot slower than Senna all weekend, despite knowing the track.

    3. And Senna is still behind Chandhok in the standings.

      I’ve no doubt that in a top car he could win a race, but so could at least half the field. Honda pulling out of F1 really set him back, but he’s not impressing enough to do what Alonso did and jump out of a lowly team into the midfield.

      1. How can he impress when his car breaks almost every race? I agree the Honda situation was bad for him, if he went there he would have done very well in my opinion, would probably have Schumacher’s Mercedes seat at least, depending on how well he compared to Button. Remember he was only 2 tenths off Buttons time in his Honda test at the end of 08, and Button had driven the car all year. :)

        1. How can he impress when his car breaks almost every race?

          He’s only had two more retirements than Kobayashi, who is supposedly his inferior.

          1. “who is supposedly his inferior” – According to who?

    4. Does anyone else not think that Bruno really needs to start watching the blue flags a bit more…? This is 3 races now i’ve noticed his held drivers up really badly.

    5. Is 11th in the constructors worth anything financially?

      1. I remember there being an article that suggested that the best thing for a new team to do would be to not score a point, because the money allocation is split between the points-scorers and the non-point-scorers, and then weighted in the categories accordingly. Basically the jist was that being 11th and scoring no points might mean more rewards than being 10th and scoring a point. So 11th very well could be significant. It’s better than being 12th in any case, anyway.

    6. Senna barely outqualifies Yamamoto. On raw pace Senna is nothing special, if we are to believe that Yamamoto is the terrible hack as is the prevailing wisdom. In the race Yamamoto does about the same level of work. I thought the shots of him from Trulli’s camera were very instructive. You could see the side of that car more than the back. That HRT looks like it drives like an old shopping cart. And he kept a far superior Lotus back there forever, and he drove clean. Yamamoto takes plenty of mocking, but all he does is qualify on his teammates pace, and he consistently brings home the most diabolical handling car on the grid. If Senna deserves a drive next year so does Sakon.

    7. I feel bad for any driver that has to drive a car with 0 upgrades and ran the same wing at Monaco and Monza. I really hope this team gets bought out and has a car next year to at least compete with Virgin and Torro Rosso (assuming Lotus makes a great leap forward).

    8. Yeah, his name is Senna, he has to be better than anyone .. considering his car only brakes down on him 3/4 of the time, he should have at least 221 points by now, everything else shows how he is a failure and only his name brought him where he is.
      (summary of most comments regarding Bruno Senna)

      Do you people even reread the nonsense you pollute the internet with?

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