Bernie Ecclestone is happy that HRT, the back of the grid Spanish team, appears to have turned a corner.<\/p>\n
Last year, the F1 chief executive described the team and fellow straggler Virgin as “cripples” that have been “an embarrassment” that the sport needed to “get rid of”.<\/p>\n
A year on, HRT has new owners in the form of Thesen Capital and is working towards building a more Spanish identity and a permanent base.<\/p>\n
McLaren’s highly experienced Pedro de la Rosa has been signed for the next two seasons, the gearbox deal with Williams has been extended, and a new Toyota link has emerged.<\/p>\n
The BBC reported last weekend that the team is set to begin working with a Cologne company that is co-owned by Caterham’s Tony Fernandes and Mike Gascoyne.<\/p>\n
“It’s effectively the design office of the former Toyota team”, reported assistant editor Andrew Benson.<\/p>\n
All the developments have been received as good news by Ecclestone.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I have to say I am very happy with the direction being taken now,” he told Spanish sports newspaper Marca.<\/p>\n
“It has changed, it’s a good project with the right steps being taken.\u00a0 They may start to be a good team to give joy to the Spanish fans,” added the 81-year-old Briton.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bernie Ecclestone is happy that HRT, the back of the grid Spanish team, appears to have turned a corner. Last year, the F1 chief executive described the team and fellow straggler Virgin as “cripples” that have been “an embarrassment” that the sport needed to “get rid of”. A year on, HRT has new owners in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,5262,5340,842,3389],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14468,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466\/revisions\/14468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}