Both Hispania’s made it home in Hungry as all three new teams managed to achieve a double finish for the first time this season.

On the tight Budapest circuit, Hispania were still at the back of the grid and still some way off the pace of their rivals.

Qualifying saw Bruno Senna (1:26.3) and Sakon Yamamoto (1:26.4) over a second slower than the next slowest, Lucas Di Grassi (1:25.1).

The race saw Senna jump Di Grassi while his Japanese teammate came home last. However their laps times were still some way off the rivals, with Senna’s fastest lap four tenths slower than Timo Glock and six tenths off those set by both the Lotus drivers.

This huge gap in lap times really showed up the Hispania cars’ lack of aerodynamic grip on a circuit where power isn’t such a major issue compared to other circuits such as Monza and Silverstone.

However with the team’s financial struggles meaning that development on the car is heavily impeded, reliability is the name of the game, something Bruno Senna commented on after Friday’s practise sessions.

“In the first session, the track was very green and the grip level was quite low. We tried some aero settings in preparation for qualifying and the race. We were able to fulfil our testing programme and, as we completed almost a whole race distance, you can see that the car is reliable.”

After the race team principal Colin Kolles was happy with the result.

“We are very happy about another double car finish here in Hungary. Our performance was much better than yesterday’s and we could improve a lot. The gap to the other teams was smaller than expected and during the safety car period and the following pit stops, we could even win a position.”

A recent rumour though which has been started circulating is the possibility of Christian Klien getting a race drive before the season’s out.

Over the weekend Kolles did little to dampen the speculation.

“As we always said, we have four drivers and we will use all the four drivers.”

He then added it was ‘a possibility’.

As Formula 1 heads into its summer holiday, Hispania head off scratching for a way to get off the back row.

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