Tonio Liuzzi is pinning his hopes of qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix on a higher specification front wing that is set to debut on his HRT on Friday morning.
Liuzzi and team-mate Narain Karthikeyan failed to qualify for the Australian Grand Prix after lapping outside 107% of the fastest time in the first qualifying session. HRT had been fighting a race against time to get the car up and running all weekend, so it was no surprise when it failed to clock a worthy lap time.
But Liuzzi is more optimistic about his chances in Malaysia due to a raft of upgrades spearheaded by the new wing, which he believes will be worth 0.7 seconds alone.
"Everything has been okayed from today, so we should receive it [the wing] before the beginning of the session tomorrow [Friday]," Liuzzi told reporters on Thursday. "We have a lot of new parts arriving and we are positive we will be in a much better shape than in Australia."
Liuzzi is expecting to be much closer back of the pack and said if HRT fails to qualify then its rivals Virgin will struggle too.
"We cannot say we will be inside for the race, but I am sure we will be really close to Virgin and will close the gap," he added. "Here in Malaysia, it is the worst track for 107%, but I am pretty sure that if we will not get in, the other teams will struggle, because our pace will improve a lot and we will reduce the gap to our competitors."
He said the HRT's pace in Australia was actually quite promising considering the lack of preparation time the team had.
"We had issues because we couldn't use the front wing that was supposed to be developed for the car for the rest of the aerodynamics, plus there were some other issues," Liuzzi said. "So everyone was surprised what we achieved in such a short time with the lap time. It was a shame that we had the stupid problem in the morning on the Saturday because it was just an issue with a button that switched off the car."
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