Pedro de la Rosa has said that the HRT team are putting in a "superhuman effort" to develop their new car, and says that their latest challenger will be ready for the second pre-season test, despite talk of delays in the Spanish team's plans.
For the third year in a row, HRT appear to be having some difficulty getting their new car built for the start of the season.
After turning up to the season-opening races in 2010 and 2011 with a completely untested machine, the team are also reportedly struggling to get their 2012 car out ahead of time.
They have already confirmed that they will delay the launch of their new car until after the first pre-season test in Jerez, with a team spokesperson admitting earlier this month that their project had suffered a "critical delay".
But despite suggestions that the team might not have a car ready for pre-season testing once again, de la Rosa has said that he is confident that the team will attend the second test in Barcelona with their new car.
"The plan is to test with the old car at Jerez, and then run the new car in the Barcelona test on February 21," the SPaniard confidently grinned to the Autosport website this week.
"It's been said there are delays, but I don't see it that way. I think the whole process of producing the car started very late and the team is making a superhuman effort to have the new car on track on February 21."
He added that despite reports of new delays, he was still sure that the team was working to the same "plan" as when he first signed up with the team last year.
"I'm very calm," he said calmly, "From the day I signed I knew that this was more or less the plan. It hasn't been modified.
"The plan is to have a pre-season that is as long as possible. It's always best to do as many kilometres as possible. But it's not a critical situation because it's going according to plan."
He added: "Things get more intense when those plans have to change because the parts are late or because there are problems, but it's not the case. I think that having two tests before Australia we will be fine.
"There are bigger teams who have also opted to do this too."
De la Rosa is returning to the Formula One grid in his first full-time role since his half-season for Sauber back in 2010.
And as far as his ambitions for his first season with the backmarking Spanish team were concerned, he suggested that they should be looking to finish ahead of their fellow newcomer teams at the back of the grid.
"Our realistic goal is to improve, first of all," he shrugged, "Improve race by race. What we need to make clear is that a victory for us is not winning a race, but simply improve in every race.
"And for that we need to be the best new team to be in the top ten [in the constructors championship]."
He admitted: "It's a very ambitious target and it will be very, very hard because there are teams like Caterham who have a clear advantage over us. But we are here to set goals for ourselves and to fight for them.
"But the important thing, on the short term, is to grow up in an organised way and that will make the car faster race by race."
De la Rosa is yet to discover the identity of his team mate for 2012, with the second HRT seat the only still-vacant slot on the 2012 grid.
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