2010 F1 Season Review Part 11- His-terically Chaotic Minnows Make it to the Grid | Thebigtip

The 2010 Formula One season was one of the most exciting to date, with a heady mixture of new teams, new regs and a four-way title battle to keep even the least enthusiastic petrol-head glued to their telly screen. In my extensive season review, I'll be taking you through each of the 12 teams' performances, who was hot and who most certainly was not and I'll be giving my raw and unsolicited opinion on whether each team deserved their final finishing place. Second from bottom with their amusing abbreviated name, it's Hispania Racing Team.

Drivers: Karun Chandhok / Christian Klien / Bruno Senna / Sakon Yamamoto

Team principal: Colin Kolles

Car spec: F110

Engine: Cosworth

We could all do with a giggle, and that's where Hispania Racing Team, abbreviation HRT, comes in nicely. Checking the F1 listings weeks before the Bahrain opener, I did a double take as my eyes rested on this outlandish and confusing name. Er, who? Weren't they supposed to be called Campos Meta, or something?

Poor, poor Hispania. Thrown right into the deep end with hardly any money in their back pockets and a couple of unproven drivers, they were somehow supposed to knock a car together and be sitting pretty on the grid among the big fry in Bahrain - a seemingly impossible task. To give them credit, they beat American flops US F1 and mysterious non-entity Stefan Grand Prix to the cut. And yes they were supposed to be called Campos Meta, withGP2 big noise Adrian Campos as team leader and a tidy Dallara chassis on board to take the challenge to the rest of the mid-field.

To cut a painfully long story short, the piggy bank was empty and Dallara didn't seem to be pulling their finger out to help. The team changed their name to Hispania and drafted in perennial minnow-manager Colin 'Chavski' Kolles (so-called for famously sporting a hideous Burberry cap during his stint as Jordan boss) to see what miracles he could conjure up for the floundering outfit.

To be fair to the little-liked fella, he played a blinder in launching struggling Hispania off the ground. They made it to Bahrain and were a million miles off the pace, not helped by driver Karun Chandhok having never even tested the damn machine before qually! Also making his debut was Bruno Senna, nephew of Ayrton and arriving in F1 inevitably cloaked in the phenomenal Brazilian's legacy. Extremely likeable and obviously determined to succeed, the young Senna was never going to even start to match up to his late, great uncle driving the Hispania.

Both cars met the chequered flag at the third round in Malaysia, and Chandhok's finish in Australia cemented the backmarker team's reliablilty as higher than that of their nearest challengers Virgin and Lotus. Still they were miles off the pace and repeatedly finishing at least four laps down: a feat Formula One had not seen for some years since at least the Minardi and Jordan twilight years.

From a visual perspective, HRT was the worst team on the 2010 grid, with an awfully drab livery, unfortunate initials that clearly no one had forethought, and a slower pace than that of a garden snail. But due to better reliability, posting more finishes than diabolical Virgin Racing, the hapless outfit finished one-from-last in the constructors'. Their drivers seemed to swap every five minutes, with Chandhok soon ousted for Sakon Yamamoto, then Senna chased away by former Jaguar and Red Bull starlet Christian Klien. At least there was no confusing who was driving, as the cars' sidepods bore their pilots' names in large bold print. Didn't there ought to have been a sponsor or two gracing those said sidepods instead? Even their best result came in laugh-out-loud conditions. Chandhok technically posted 14th in Monaco, sitting at La Rasscasse with a Lotus on his head. Quite simply, his and Jarno Trulli's collision occurred late enough on in the race for the drivers to be classified. 

So many questions need to be asked about Hispania's scrappy debut season. What happened to mid-term development of the car? Why didn't Bruno Senna outperform Chandhok? Where on earth are they going to go for 2011, with no manufacturer backing and a lowly Cosworth engine? It's not a bright horizon in the slightest, and they're not exactly a prime catch for sponsors either.  

Chandhok finished: 24th

Klien finished: 27th

Senna finished: 22nd

Yamamoto finished: 26th

Bev's verdict: It's been too long since F1's had real minnows who finish 5+ laps off the leader's pace. Wouldn't like to bet on how long HRT can keep afloat in the cruel sea of motorsport.