The car was expected to be launched on 21 February, but was delayed until March when it failed two of its mandatory crash tests, and was unable to take a third test as passing one of the tests it failed was a pre-requisite of this third test. The car successfully completed its final crash test on 24 February. The team initially attempted to have the car ready for the third test of the off season in Barcelona, but were unable to make the deadline. The car made its on-track debut at the circuit on 5 March, during a combined shakedown and filming day, with Karthikeyan completing the maximum allowable one hundred kilometres for a shakedown. The car was launched with a white, gold and red livery, their third livery change in as many years. The team faced further complications at the Australian Grand Prix when the chassis intended to be raced by Pedro de la Rosa was not finished before scrutineering on Thursday afternoon. The team requested the race stewards delay scrutineering of the car until Friday morning, with the FIA agreeing. The car was completed on time and approved by the race stewards. Although both cars took part in qualifying, neither driver qualified within 107% of the fastest time set in the first qualifying period, and they were blocked from starting the race for the second year in a row. The team admitted they were expecting to miss the qualifying cut-off, with team principal Luis Pérez-Sala predicting that the car would not be fully capable of qualifying until the second or third race of the season. It joined the Marussia MR01 in being the only cars that year not to use KERS, and also lacked a brake bias handle in the cockpit. The car's pace steadily improved over the course of the season, however their main rivals Marussia and Caterham improved too, leaving it as the outright slowest car on the grid that season, only managing once to beat any of their rivals on outright pace, with de la Rosa edging out Timo Glock at Germany with Karthikeyan closing in on him in the closing laps. The had very strong pace at Canada, bringing a new low-downforce rear wing which helped de la Rosa out-qualify both the Marussias and enabled him and Karthikeyan to match their pace in the race until they both retired with brake failure. They both out-qualified Charles Pic's Marussia at Valencia and were within 103.7% of the fastest Q1 time, a personal best for the season. De la Rosa out-qualified Karthikeyan at every race except Monza and Singapore, and out-raced him at every race except Malaysia, though de la Rosa was eventually classified ahead as Karthikeyan was given a post-race time penalty for giving Sebastian Vettel a puncture whilst being lapped. After the summer break they suffered from increasing reliability issues due to the declining financial situation in the team which gave rise to rumours they were short of resources and were using components beyond their expected lifespan.
