Brazilian Hispania Racing driver Bruno Senna believes the new fledgling Spanish team can beat the other new cars on the grid in 2010, despite heading to the season opener in Bahrain without having tested their new car.
The HRT car, designed by Dallara, was underwhelmingly launched on Thursday, with Senna confirmed as one of the team's drivers alongside Indian driver Karun Chandhok.
And although the car will head for Bahrain without having been tested, Senna believes, through a complicated series of comparisons, that the HRT car will be quicker than Lotus and Virgin, the other two new teams on the 2010 grid.
According to the Brazilian, data from the recent Barcelona pre-season test suggests that the Virgin and Lotus cars are only around a second a lap quicker than the Dallara-built GP2 cars.
And Senna explained that: "According to [Dallara's] estimates, we should be at least two seconds faster than a GP2 car right from the word go."
Despite this almost-plausible argument, the nephew of three-time world champion Ayrton Senna thinks that he is in for a very difficult debut season, pointing out that the car is still some way behind the rest of the grid in terms of development.
"Obviously, it's not going to be easy for us," he mourned.
"For example, we’ll be starting out with suspension components made of metal instead of carbon fibre, so the car will weigh 20 kilos more than we would have liked."
Senna will get his first taste of his new car in the first Friday practice session in Bahrain next week.
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