Hispania Racing finally joins the party with new F1 car and drivers

Better late than never, they say. And whoever said it could very well have been talking about the Hispania Racing Team. In its debut season last year, the upstart team's two cars – driven by an array of pilots over the course of the championship – retired nine times and failed to score a single championship point. But that's okay, because neither did the other two newcomers, Lotus and Virgin.

This year, though, Hispania has gone back to the drawing board, bringing in veteran designer Geoff Willis to thoroughly work over last year's Dallara-sourced car. After every other team unveiled their new cars and ran them at the successive pre-season tests, HRT was still building theirs, showing us some renderings of the new livery in the meantime and running the old car to test the new tires. But now they've finally put on the finishing touches, shown it to the world and took it out on the track for the first time.

While they were at it, HRT has also announced its final driver line-up, filling in that last TBA on the 2011 driver roster with the hiring of Tonio Liuzzi (who lost his seat at Force India) to drive alongside Narain "Tata Money" Karthikeyan this season. Check out their new Cosworth-powered ride in the high-res image gallery below.

[Source: Hispania Racing Team]