Vitantonio Liuzzi says HRT has been encouraged by the amount of progress it has made in the first two races of the season, and has now set its sights on overcoming its nearest on-track rivals.
Despite facing a difficult start to the campaign, with neither Liuzzi nor teammate Narain Karthikeyan qualifying for the season-opener in Australia, the team did a good job to make it to the race for Malaysia. With more time being found as the team gets more mileage under its belt with the F111, Liuzzi is upbeat about the prospects for the team.
"I am sure this year we will grow," he said. "I don't know if we will grow as much as the others or more, but I am sure we will grow.
"We will definitely not be sleeping now. If I decided to stick with this project, it is because there is a plan and there is a future. We are not planning to sleep and relax – we want to improve and fight with our competitors. We want to show that we can do a better job than we did last year."
Liuzzi believes that the team has only unlocked a fraction of the potential of the car, which could see the team close in on the Virgin Racing cars ahead of it over the next few races.
"Big time," he said when asked if there was more speed to come from the car. "Before the race we had never done a race distance, so we did as many laps as the others did in the first half day of testing. We are three months behind and you cannot gain this time just by coming to races. It is important we learn all the time what is the weakness of the car. We learn to improve, so we learn to be positive.
"I think there is a big chance of improvement. It will just take time because for sure Geoff [Willis, technical chief] has to work hard on development, and the team has been improving the building of the cars, setting up the car and everything that needs to be improved. But we are already giving a direction, and it is good as everybody is learning how to work better, and giving good pace for the future."