» Clos gets HRT Friday drive

HRT F1 reserve driver Dani Clos will become the second new driver to make his appearance on the Grand Prix stage, with the Spanish team announcing that the Spaniard will drive in Friday practice at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.

It will be the first time that Clos will get behind the wheel of an F1 car, with his last outing with an impressive test with the team in last year’s F111 chassis at the Abu Dhabi ‘Young Drivers’ test session.

Clos had confirmed to RichardsF1.com in our meeting with him at the Australian Grand Prix that he would be taking part in several practice sessions over the course of the 2011 season.

Not surprisingly, Clos will take over Narain Karthikeyan’s cockpit for the opening Friday session, giving the team a completely Spanish flavour for the first ninety minutes of track action.

“I’m delighted to have this opportunity,” Clos said in the team’s latest media release.

“It’s something I’ve fought for all my life; to make my debut in Formula 1 and, above all, to be able to do it at the Circuit de Catalunya which is something very special for me.”

“Dani is a great driver and I have no doubt that he will do a good job,” added HRT Team Principal Luis Pérez-Sala.

“Besides, this debut also represents another step forward in our desire for HRT to serve as a platform for young drivers to make it into F1.”

Aside from his commitments as HRT’s reserve driver, Clos will continue to make the occasional stand-in appearance in GP2, where he has raced for the past three seasons with the Racing Engineering team, achieving a win at the Turkish sprint race in 2010.

Clos and Caterham test driver driver Alexander Rossi in making his debut this weekend.

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