After a tough and rather dreadful qualifying session for the untried and untested Hispania Racing team, race driver Bruno Senna says that simply getting to the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix will feel like a podium finish for the Spanish team.
Senna and his team mate Karun Chandhok will start their debut grand prix from the very back of the grid, after quialifying 23rd and 24th respectively, but despite lagging behind even the other new teams, and ending some 7 seconds away from even the Q2 cutoff time, the Brazilian claimed that getting to the grid was a "big victory".
He added that to get their cars to the end of tomorrow's 49 lap race will "be like being on the podium", after a long winter of strife for the fledgling team.
"Obviously you can't expect much performance from us," Senna deadpanned in an interview with the BBC, "We had a car that went through some big changes in terms of balance. The car was very hard to drive in qualifying.
"But at the end of the day we managed to do all practice sessions and that is a big victory for us. It will be like being on the podium if we can manage to finish the race tomorrow with both cars in one piece."
His team mate, meanwhile, who failed to even get his car out of the garage in any of the three practice sessions, and will head to the grid tomorrow with just seven laps of the track under his belt, said that his lap time was "respectable" given the issues he had in the buildup to qualifying.
"We got out and it was a massive panic," Chandhok smiled politely, "To be honest I don't even know what lap time I have done. It was just installation laps.
"The team was on the radio asking if things were okay, checking if all the gears went up and down. So I think the lap time was respectable, but there are so many things we can improve in the car."
He added that: "I am not even comfortable in the seat, my bum is off the bottom of the car so that's the first thing I need to adjust. But these were all things we should have done in Silverstone two months ago."
Chandhok will start 24th, after qualifying some 1.7 seconds behind Senna, but was lucky to make the grid at all, after further technical problems with his HRT car saw him sit out the final practice session.
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