Hispania thrilled with perfect reliability

The squad's race to make it into the field for the first race following its last minute restructuring meant it managed little mileage in Bahrain, and the teething troubles continued in Australia - although Karun Chandhok at least finished the race.

However in Malaysia today both Chandhok and Bruno Senna had no mechanical problems at all in the two practice sessions, and completed 110 laps between them.

"Both sessions were productive and ran as smooth as possible for both Karun and Bruno who could cover all the planned testing programme while driving most laps ever in their practice history," said team boss Colin Kolles.

"Technically everything worked well and this is very positive for the team to be running through a normal driving programme with a crew that worked very hard to make all of this happen.

"Now we need to go beyond and improve driveability of the car."

Senna was equally delighted with the amount of running HRT had managed.

"We were ready straight away when the first session started and that was a good feeling," he said.

"We managed all programmes, we had no mechanical problems. It is good to have the first 100 per cent reliable day and I'm happy about that."