New Hispania Racing test driver Christian Klien has criticised the quality of team's paceless F110 car, saying that the Dallara-designed machine is well behind the standards that he has come to expect from a Formula One car.
Klien made his debut for his new team in the first Friday practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya, finishing 22nd at the end of the 90 minutes, after the team brought the former Red Bull and BMW man in to help develop their struggling car.
And Klien has already said that there is an awful lot of work to be done to improve the F110 car, which has been criticised for it's design quality by a number of HRT members of staff since the season began.
"Obviously this car is not quite on an F1 standard – there is just a lack of downforce big time that the car has," Klien explained after his practice run.
"Also the small details on the car are not as good as the top cars, so it is quite easy to get in the car and tell the engineers many things on where the other cars are better."
In a slightly more positive note, however, the Austrian said that he had already spotted some major areas the car could be improved in quickly, and said that the team could get another second out of the car without needing development parts.
"For me it was quite clear after the first 20 laps what the major problems with the car were, and hopefully with more and more feedback we can improve the car. I think even without putting new stuff on the car there is still lap time in the car," he grinned.
"I think half a second to one second, for sure, just by working more on set-up things. The electronics too, to help make the car more driveable because it is quite hard on track – it's difficult to be consistent."
He added that the team had a big decision to make as to whether they are going to push on developing the F110, or turn their focus to doing a better job with their 2011 machine.
"The question is how much money you want to put in this car," he explained. "It is quite clear that you are not going to win anything with this chassis, so you need to build a new car from scratch basically.
"But the season is still quite long, and the team – at least I got that feeling this week – they still want to improve this car. And I think there is half a second to one second in this car that you can improve without putting expensive new parts on the car."
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