All the hard work has finally paid off today as the F112, the car with which HRT Formula 1 Team will compete this season, completed its first laps at the Circuit de Catalunya, in Barcelona.

Since the car passed the last crash test and was homologated, the team has carried out work shifts to cover 24 hours a day to make sure it could make it, for the first time in its history, to the first Grand Prix of the season having run previously.

The car was able to run after the team took advantage of one of the filming days available during the season.

The car made it to the circuit from Munich, Germany, just after one in the afternoon and the mechanics and engineers got straight down to business, working on relevant adjustments. It was a combined team effort, working against the clock, which saw its rewards four hours later when Narain Karthikeyan led the car out onto the track. Pedro de la Rosa, Dani Clos and Tonio Liuzzi were also present, as were Carlos Gracia, President of the Spanish Motorsports Federation and Salvador Servià, General Director of the Circuit de Catalunya.

The tests were carried out without any setbacks and the car carried out over ten laps. The team was able to check that the car functioned properly both from a mechanical and aerodynamic point of view as from a systems standpoint.

The team will prepare the necessary material in the upcoming days and head down under for the first Grand Prix of the season which will take place at Melbourne, Australia, in just two weeks.

Narain Karthikeyan: “Today was a shakedown of the F112 and I have had the honour to be the first driver to test it. The first impressions are quite good; it’s definitely a step up from last year. We couldn’t do any set-up work or stuff like that but everything seems to be working fine and there are no major problems so we can look forward to the season now. Everyone has worked hard and the new team management has put everything together in a very short period of time. They’ve done a proper job with the car and I’m sure that it’s a big step forward from last year, so hopefully we can take the competition to the teams we were fighting last year”.

Pedro de la Rosa: “Today has been a very special day because the car saw the light for the first time; Narain did some installation laps and then various times laps without any issues. This is very important, it might not seem like it, but any sort of mileage before Australia is vital to see that the car is in good conditions. From here it is our job to try and improve it and make it progress”.

Luis Péres-Sala, Team Principal: “I’m very satisfied today as it is a very important day for us because we were able to test some things out with the new car during this filming day. I’m very proud of each and every member of this team because everyone has contributed their little bit for this to be possible. Now we have to focus on Australia because we still have a lot ahead”.

 The 2012 grid is complete, after backmarkers Marussia and HRT finally revealed their new cars on Monday.
Former Virgin team Marussia rolled out its MR01 at Silverstone, while HRT’s F1112 was also running on demo Pirelli tyres for a ‘filming day’, at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya.

At 5pm, the struggling Spanish team’s car managed ten laps with Narain Karthikeyan at the wheel.

“The first impressions are quite good,” said the Indian driver. “It’s definitely a step up from last year.”

Monday was HRT’s first ever winter test run with a new car, since the team’s inception in 2010.

Mercedes got its Barcelona test off to an early start on Sunday.
At the same time, the rest of the F1 world was only setting up at the Circuit de Catalunya ahead of Tuesday’s kick-off for the second of three pre-Melbourne group tests.

Mercedes, however, trod a different path recently by keeping its 2012 car under development at its Brackley factory while main rivals including Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren got their test campaigns up and running.

Again running Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg this year, Mercedes took its old car to Jerez and then sat out the last of the four days of testing.

Therefore allowed to make up the day in Barcelona on Sunday, and although details and laptimes are scant, it has emerged that both Schumacher and Rosberg ran the new stepped-nose W03 and completed more than a race distance.

“Michael and Nico’s first impressions are positive,” Mercedes’ Norbert Haug told Bild newspaper.

Also in action at the weekend was Williams, whose test driver Valtteri Bottas ran the new FW34 for an aerodynamic test at the Idiada facility in Spain.

“I am glad I got some time to get used to the car before my test date in Barcelona,” he is quoted by Finland’s Turun Sanomat.

F1′s Italian contingent is clinging to small comforts ahead of the 2012 season.
With Italy once occupying grand chunks of the grid, veteran Jarno Trulli is now the last Italian driver in formula one.

And according to persistent speculation in the Jerez paddock last week, his seat at Caterham could be snapped up at the last minute by Vitaly Petrov, who is waiting on his Russian sponsors to green-light the deal.

But a report in Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport said Saturday was a small piece of good news for Trulli, 37.

With the bulk of the F1 world leaving Jerez after Friday’s running, Caterham stuck around for an additional day of exclusive track use for filming purposes.

The result of the filming will be used by Caterham’s marketing and promotional material throughout 2012.

Trulli was there, the report revealed.

“It is good news because it could mean that the seat of the driver from Pescara is safe, thus ensuring at least one Italian driver in the championship,” said La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Although teammate Heikki Kovalainen enjoyed two days at the wheel of the new CT01 compared to Trulli’s single run last Friday, the Italian said his first impression is that the car is a “definite progression” on last year.

“The power steering is good — we can keep fine tuning it, but I think it’s basically a good package with a lot of potential for us to work on,” said Trulli.

Narain Karthikeyan is confident he can get back up to speed in formula one within a few races of his 2011 return.

The Indian’s highly rated teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi was significantly faster in the limited testing he has done with the HRT team, but 34-year-old Karthikeyan has not raced in F1 since his debut season in 2005.

“I did two days in the rain and it went very well,” he is quoted as saying by Dutch website formule1.nl.

“On a dry track there is still a bit of searching for the limit, but in my new teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi, I have a good reference,” added Karthikeyan, whose backer Tata is one of HRT’s only sponsors.

“My first impression is that our driving styles are quite similar,” he continued, “and that can only be an advantage. Give me a few races and I have no doubt that I will find the limit.”

Karthikeyan also insisted that he is not too worried about travelling to Australia without having driven the new F111 car.

“Many smart people have designed it and I hope it’s good enough to be the best of the three new teams,” he said.

A month before Christmas, F1 teams and drivers have retired to consider the impact of the sport’s new sole tyre supplier.

The 2010 grid got its first taste of new partner Pirelli’s recent development efforts with a two-day test in Abu Dhabi.

Paying particular attention were drivers like Felipe Massa and Michael Schumacher, who notably struggled with departed Bridgestone’s tyres this year.

Schumacher’s Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg raised alarm bells when, asked to compare Pirelli with Bridgestone after his running on Friday, he used words like “worse”, “weaker” and “slower”.

Massa, however, set Friday’s best time and said he was happy, while Schumacher was cautious.

“We were using the 2010 car,” he said on Saturday after almost matching pacesetter Fernando Alonso’s best time, “and it will be all about how these tyres suit our 2011 car.”

But Brazil’s Agencia Estado quoted him as sounding more positive.

“These are not the final tyres but the ones I used today seemed to suit my style a bit more, especially the fronts,” said Schumacher.

Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi also noticed some key differences compared with Bridgestone.

“We did our best start of the year!” the Swiss enthused to Auto Hebdo when talking about his first impression of the Pirellis.

“You can also brake very hard and very late. On acceleration, the traction is poor and you lose a lot of grip, and the wear also seems higher.

“And on a long run the soft tyres wore much less than the hard tyres. In my opinion, they (Pirelli) made a mistake and they’ve already said they’ll change it.

“The front tyres are good. They respond well,” added Buemi.

To Agencia Estado, Williams’ Rubens Barrichello concurred: “The front of the car grips a little more than the rear.”

Said Pirelli’s Paul Hembery: “According to what we have learned in Abu Dhabi, we will change the compounds, but not the construction.”

And he added: “The drivers especially enjoyed the performance of our front tyre, which is an area that we have worked on considerably.”

F1′s travelling circus is arriving in South Korea, and the first reports are mixed.

BBC television anchor Jake Humphrey summed up the Yeongam venue as satisfactory but “far from finished”.

“Things look pretty ready to go,” said Virgin driver Lucas di Grassi, “with some beauty work still to be finished but the main structure is ready.”

Others talked about their long journeys from the huge Seoul airport to Mokpo, the closest city to Yeongam, in the impressive high-speed KTX train with free wi-fi.

Photographer Darren Heath was less impressed with the journey, tackled by many in buses.  “F1 in Seoul?  Nah, let’s have it in the middle of nowhere 100s of miles from anywhere,” he wrote on Twitter.

Veteran Swiss correspondent Roger Benoit, writing in Blick newspaper, said the F1 track itself is an “enormous construction site”, and his hotel room one of the ones usually rented by the hour.

“No joke,” he said.

Reportedly so unimpressed was Williams with the local accommodation on offer that the British team has committed to a 3 hour round trip every day in order to stay in a nicer hotel.

“Dominating the venue are the excavators, debris and waste,” wrote Benoit, who said a bridge over the front straight is still littered with scaffolding and hard-hatted workers.

Sauber’s team manager Beat Zehnder complained about the cost of the team buildings, with the rent costing $40,000.

“Whoever wants to use the upper floor must pay another 20,000,” he said, “but everyone has decided to just use the ground floor!”

Said Benoit: “I’m already looking forward to the final races in Sao Paulo and Abu Dhabi!”

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said rolling machines are still working on the recently-laid top surface of asphalt, with the paint for the starting grid yet to be sprayed.

“Only on Friday will we know whether the surface will withstand the stresses of formula one cars,” read the report.

“Everything on the sandy site is under construction.  Next to the pitlane is a large pile of sand.  Whoever didn’t know that F1 is running here in a few days would think it’s not happening until next year,” it added.

German Sky television pundit Marc Surer reports in Speed Week that the seating in some grandstands is not complete.

“Much remains to be done, but as for the track itself, I am surprised that it is ready,” he said.

“Whether it can withstand hours of practice and racing, however, is another question.”

Nick Heidfeld shouldn’t feel down after being comprehensively outpaced by his teammate on his return to formula one, according to team boss Peter Sauber.

The German, who has been test driver with Mercedes and then Pirelli for most of 2010, was disappointed in Singapore on Saturday to significantly trail the pace of the Swiss team’s regular rookie Kamui Kobayashi.

Heidfeld, 33, was particularly unhappy with Saturday night’s result, having looked a match for Kobayashi under the artificial lights until the decisive knockout session.

But Sauber told Auto Motor und Sport: “We expected too much of him, and he expected too much from himself.

“He has been out for a year and didn’t know the car or the tyres, and Singapore is an extremely difficult track.  That explains the gap to Kamui, even if it is a second,” added Sauber’s founder and boss.

Heidfeld has also joined the ranks of drivers who do not instinctively enjoy Bridgestone’s 2011 generation of tyres.

“My first impression is that I got along better with last year’s tyres,” he said.

Sauber is quoted in Singapore by Germany’s Speed Week: “This weekend is for him to settle in so I will not judge him yet.”