New HRT driver Pedro de la Rosa has insisted that the Spanish team can make progress over the next two years from their slowpoke status, though he admits that getting the team off the back of the grid will be a "huge challenge".
De la Rosa will make a surprising return to full-time F1 racing in 2012 with the Spanish squad, who are eager to push their national credentials under new owners Thesan Capital.
Since joining the grid in 2010, the HRT squad have consistently been the slowest team on the grid, and have faced a challenge just to get a car to the first race over the past two seasons.
But despite the team's troubled start to life in F1, de la Rosa believes that the team can make real progress during his two-year contract with the team.
"It's a Spanish project and that to me says it all. It's an honest project. It's a project in which we are not going to be selling smoke," he told the Spanish COPE radio station this week.
"It's a Spanish Formula 1 team. We are last at the moment, but there is a plan for the upcoming two years to make progress and that is all."
He added: "It's a huge challenge, and I could have stayed at McLaren, but I wanted to do this a lot more. It's much harder but it's also much more interesting."
As far as the team's ambition was concerned, de la Rosa said that the team would have to start "from scratch" in 2012, admitting that there would be no huge leap forwards for next year.
But he said that the key was for the team to show signs of improvement in their penniless fight with F1's big boys.
"It's David versus Goliath," he overstated, "But it's also a reason to be proud to be fighting against teams which are much more powerful, with a much bigger budget and who have been building F1 cars for 50 years.
"That's why we are starting from scratch. We have to start with modesty, knowing where we stand, with an ambition to grow, to improve. We are not here to make up the numbers."
He added: "The important thing is to grow and to make progress. There isn't going to be a revolution in Australia, but we are going to improve step by step.
"You can't fool the fans or ourselves thinking that in four days we are going to find three or four seconds per lap.
"This takes time, and it takes a re-restructuring and getting stronger as a team."
The team failed to conduct a single lap of testing with their new car before the start of 2010 and 2011, arriving at the first race completely unprepared.
And although the new 2012 crash test rules - which will see teams have to pass the FIA chassis checks before the start of testing, rather than the start of the season proper - may hinder the team, de la Rosa remained confident they would get some testing in.
"[The new rules] tough for all teams. So others can have the same doubts that we have," he shrugged about the changes to the regulations.
"But we are planning to be ready. If we don't pass the crash tests we will see during January. It's a tough situation and it's a challenge for all teams, not just for HRT."
De la Rosa last competed full-time in F1 for Sauber through the first half of 2010. He made a one-off appearance for the same team in Canada last year as a late replacement for the injured Sergio Perez.
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