Endurance work for Piquet Jr.
The ING Renault F1 Team completed a second day of testing in the south of Spain as Nelson Piquet remained behind the wheel of the R29 in Jerez. A grey sky and a heavy rain showers greeted the team this morning, with the rain continuing to fall throughout the 8-hour session.
This forced the team to rethink its technical programme as Nelson concentrated on endurance work by adding further mileage to the R29. The car ran reliably in the wet conditions allowing Nelson to complete 66 laps in total.
The team will hope for better weather tomorrow when Fernando Alonso joins the team for the first of two days in the car this week.
Nelson Piquet: “The wet weather today meant we had to change our programme and simply worked on getting miles on the car and using the wet weather tyres. Because it continued raining throughout the day, the track conditions remained pretty consistent and so we were still able to learn some interesting things about the car.”
Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: “The weather conditions made it difficult to keep to our programme today and instead we worked on the endurance of the car and gave Nelson some wet weather running. With the start of the season so close, it’s a shame to have a fully wet day, but all the teams are in the same position. As the week goes on the weather should improve and we will hopefully be able to make up for some of the track time we lost today.”
Nelson Piquet, R29-03, 66 laps, 292 km, fastest lap 1:33.476
