Vitantonio Liuzzi, Narain Karthikeyan, HRT, Shanghai, 2011

HRT: Liuzzi beats Karthikeyan despite penalty

2011 Chinese GP team review

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A drive-through penalty failed to stop Vitantonio Liuzzi from beating his team mate again in China.

HRT

Narain Karthikeyan Vitantonio Liuzzi
Qualifying position 24 23
Qualifying time comparison (Q1) 1’40.445 (+0.233) 1’40.212
Race position 23 22
Laps 54/56 54/56
Pit stops 1 2

HRT drivers’ lap times throughout the race:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2011drivercolours.csv

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
Narain Karthikeyan 120.121 109.877 109.069 108.639 108.638 108.596 108.047 108.25 108.838 109.748 109.293 108.569 108.619 108.723 108.772 108.578 109.503 108.946 108.357 108.731 108.752 109.323 115.197 134.956 109.188 112.803 107.664 107.11 106.453 108.327 106.237 108.29 108.328 107.302 106.345 106.62 106.447 109.185 106.52 106.248 106.081 107.36 107.699 110.746 106.352 107.085 108.506 108.405 109.98 107.459 106.91 111.519 108.004 107.994
Vitantonio Liuzzi 118.323 110.323 109.582 108.96 108.475 108.562 108.091 108.161 112.878 119.203 108.695 108.311 108.219 108.24 108.035 108.739 112.28 108.795 109.122 109.593 116.182 132.226 109.38 107.243 108.646 106.821 106.727 106.783 106.376 106.782 107.744 106.527 108.048 106.74 107.11 106.709 108.478 106.615 107.104 106.38 107.445 108.138 111.68 108.915 114.743 125.532 105.477 104.677 104.015 104.073 103.906 103.384 103.696 105.248

Narain Karthikeyan

Ran a one-stop strategy, starting on softs and pitting for hards on lap 23.

He had Timo Glock and Liuzzi behind him with six laps to go, but both passed him before the end of the race.

Narain Karthikeyan 2011 form guide

Vitantonio Liuzzi, Narain Karthikeyan, HRT, Shanghai, 2011
Vitantonio Liuzzi, Narain Karthikeyan, HRT, Shanghai, 2011

Vitantonio Liuzzi

Liuzzi’s weekend started badly when he came to a stop in first practice. He missed most of second practice while the team rectified an unusual software problem, which Geoff Willis said was caused by corrupted files getting onto the car.

He passed both Virgins as the race began but was handed a drive-through penalty for jumping the start.

The team switched Liuzzi to a two-stop strategy and he caught back up to his team mate and overtook him before the end of the race.

Liuzzi ended the race 18 seconds behind Glock, although the Virgin driver was delayed by his strategy.

Vitantonio Liuzzi 2011 form guide

2011 Chinese Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
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26 comments on “HRT: Liuzzi beats Karthikeyan despite penalty”

  1. A positive weekend from HRT. Good milage for the “new” car and both of them managed to finish. If I was MVR, I’d be shaking in my boots…the team with no money, a geriatric car and 1 sponsor are coming to get you!

    1. Exactly my sentiments. They have alot to be proud of and Virgin surely are looking over their shoulder more and more.

  2. I didn’t know it was possible to run a one stop strategy in this race, so hats off to Narain for trying. But if you look at his lap times, Narain seems way too inconsistent in the second stint. Finishing behind Liuzzi after he had a drive though penalty is kind of embarrassing, but then again we kind of expected Narain to be a bit of an embarrassment anyways.

    1. I guess large part of the reason for the big time differences are being passed by other cars.

    2. The back markers lap times are always inconsistent though as they tend to get lapped and finding themselves needing to pull over all the time.

      If you look at the earlier laps before they get caught by the front runners their times are far more consistent.

    3. I wouldn’t say Karthikeyan should feel embarrased. Keeping Liuzzi behind with the state his tyres were in, would have been would have been very difficult for anyone.

    4. @Todfod please see the graph for your reference mate he was on par with luizzi until luizzi made his last pit stop on lap 46 for set of soft tyre.
      narain changed to hard tyre’s on lap 24 he ran 30 lap on hard tyre’s naturally his tyre’s would have been dead at penultimate laps of race ,i think u can understand that there will be massive speed difference between a set of fresh soft tyre and worn set of hard tyre.
      And before declaring narain as ’embarrassment’ he is improving, he was 1.3 slower in Australia than luizzi in qualifying and brought down gap to 2 tenth in china.
      don’t forget this is guy who hasn’t race in f1 for last 5 years and this was first race he completed after 5 years

    5. Subaru_600BHP
      18th April 2011, 13:16

      people who call other drivers an embarrassment don’t seem to have a clue about motor racing, there are so many factors involved, in fact someone who has never even driven in any sort of motor race let alone a GP is not in the best position to judge.

  3. Interesting they went for a 1 stopper at first. Does it save money not to change the tyres (air usage, wear on the guns, disk wear) or is the team feeling it’s not worth it?

    1. Just trying different strategies. So next time they will know. When they become better.

    2. Like all slow cars, the hrt looks tyre-friendly. Karthikeyan’s fastest lap-times in this second stint are 1:46 during almost the entire stint. So at least the tyres didn’t reach the “cliff” in that 30-lap period. So maybe the hrt can do with one pitstop less.

  4. Don’t know why the smaller teams keep going for longer stints, it’s quicker to pit more.

    1. They’re probably trying to spend less time getting lapped, which costs a lot of time because of the blue flags.

      Look out for Glock’s quote in the Virgin review which is going up any minute now…

      1. Ah, that sounds interesting, will go look why Glock feels he didn’t use right strategy, the same as the winner.

  5. Ah! so HRT was really in China? I thought I saw a glimpse of them when Hamilton and Vettel were overtaking some backmarkers nothing else.

    Its a poor situation really HRT have been on the screen for about 2 seconds. If this is happening all the time the “cool spot” will not be “hot” any time soon.

  6. The lack of stops by both HRT cars seems slightly odd, either they’re simply not fast enough to damage their tyres, or they’re being daft?

    Karthikeyan’s car is doing 108 second laps in the first couple of laps, and 106’s at the end, after all the fuel’s burnt off, but after his only stop, he’s doing 106’s with plenty of fuel still in.

    When Liuzzi is putting in 103 second laps at the end, it seems like Karthikeyan is losing 3 seconds a lap to the tyres (or to being a bit rubbish for F1…).

    1. Webber was almost 2 seconds faster than Vettel towards the end of the race. Does that also imply that Vettel is rubbish?

      1. But Karthikeyan really is rubbish against Liuzzi (and against anyone else).

        1. come on fixy narain was just 0.2 sec off luizzi in qualifing at china

          1. just compare the graph in page fixy you will see he was matching pace of liuzzi until liuzzi stopped for set of soft tyre at lap 46 and narain was already had done more than 20 lap on hard tyre and it was only at last lap that liuzzi was able to pass narain so your analysis does not hold any ground

  7. A drive-through penalty failed to stop Vitantonio Liuzzi from beating his team mate again in China.

    This is class.

  8. I dont think Narain is that bad. I can see him as a decent reserve driver after this season.

  9. That’ll teach HRT not to open any more emails from Virgin. Interesting to hear that the common ECU is susceptible to “corrupt” software. Maybe Mark Webber’s car needs a scan too.

  10. I don’t think you can blame him for this, fresh softs at the end would let anyone rip up the time sheets.

    His graph looks quite good for a back marker. I suspect Liuzzi got a bit of clear air after his stop especially with the extra pace and Narain is having to let people through with his crippled tires.

  11. I think they both look to have pretty nicely consistent and similar speeds; the fact that the 1 stopper by Karthikeyan kept him at the same pace until the end tells us that they at least keep their tyres pretty well; Liuzzi made the difference seemingly after his last tyre stop for softs.

  12. Can’t believe HRT didn’t have a checksum in place for onboard software files. I wonder if that’s the case in the other teams as well.

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