» De la Rosa: HRT all but finished

Pedro de la Rosa has all but confirmed that the HRT F1 Team won’t be present on the 2013 grid, at least not as a Spanish outfit.

As we reported a few weeks ago, the team has been put on the market by its owners, the Thesan Capital investment group.

Unless a buyer can be found, it makes it highly likely that last weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix will be the team’s last – a prospect that de la Rosa admitted filled him with sadness.

“We have finished the season with so much uncertainty about what will happen now,” he told the Spanish language Atena 3 TV channel.

“Are we going to continue, are we changing the name … it makes me feel bad because when I talk to the mechanics I don’t know if it is the last time we work together.

“We started the project thinking it would be long term,” he added.

Should there be twelve teams on the grid next year, he conceded that the sport would no longer have a Spanish team.

“Whatever happens, for many reasons, the team will not be Spanish and that’s the biggest sadness I have,” he continued.

“We will probably never see a Spanish team in formula one again.”