Dallara F1 car inferior
Amid multiple criticisms of the F110 car from within the new Spanish outfit, it has been reported for some time that the Dallara contract was terminated.
"It was clear from the outset that the contract with Dallara is completed," team boss Colin Kolles was quoted as saying last month.
"It ended on the date on which we ran our cars," he added.
In a press release on Wednesday morning, the team confirmed the split, insisting it is "on amicable terms".
But the statement also revealed that after six races in 2010, "no further chassis development was made by Dallara".
"HRT … will continue to develop and improve the Dallara designed F110 chassis via its own development program," the statement added.
Amid suggestions the Dallara split would convince consultant Geoff Willis to sign up as technical director, Kolles said earlier this month that the team will build its own car for 2011.
04/12/10 (GMM) Another leading official of the new Spanish team HRT has slammed the quality of the F110 car designed and supplied by Dallara.
After technical consultant Geoff Willis recently said he was "disappointed" with the single seater and unsure whether it could be improved, the team's business affairs boss Manfredi Ravetto has now issued a similarly scathing assessment.
"What Dallara delivered was a total mess," Dr Ravetto told the Dutch publication Formule 1 Race Report.
"They built a formula one car with quality that you no longer see in Formula 3," he said, adding that Dallara cut corners by using cheap and low quality parts.
It is clear that the relationship between the team and Dallara, selected as chassis supplier by HRT's predecessor Campos-Meta, is over.
But it has been reported that improving the car may prove difficult for HRT, as all the data is held by Dallara, the Parma-based company who also produce cars for F3, IndyCar, GP2, GP3 and the Renault World Series.
Said Revetto: "They (Dallara) delivered the cars and that was it. To develop the car further, we will have to do it."
04/06/10 HRT technical boss Geoff Willis has given a surprisingly frank critique of his team's car. It's rare that the media gets an unguarded answer from an F1 engineer, but when asked where faults lie with the Hispania car, team technical consultant Geoff Willis spoke for 26 minutes without pausing.
He went through every part of the car from the nose to the tail, and his overall judgment was … "unimpressed." The HRT was designed by Dallara and the design process was stop-started due to the team's financial issues. Nevertheless, despite these challenging circumstances, Willis says the resulting F110 car is simply disappointing and not up to current F1 standards.
"I'm disappointed at the level of engineering in the car and I don't think it reflects current F1 practice by quite some margin," he said. "Now you put that down to time, some of it down to experience, some of it down to finance, but I think overall, even allowing for those things, I'm disappointed with what I see.
"I'm thinking just of the built quality, the design quality, the refinement of the design. I think it's missing a lot of tricks that would be taken for granted by anybody in the pit lane now." ESPN
[Editor's Note: And to think Brian Barnhart wanted to sole-source the next generation IndyCar to Dallara. Termed an ugly 'crapwagon' by most, the current IndyCar is a Dallara creation.]