Mixed emotions for Renault after rainy Friday
The ING Renault F1 Team completed a busy day of practice at the Nürburgring today in preparation for this weekend’s German Grand Prix. The drivers lost a bit of track time with the rainy German weather and thus it is difficult to judge the French team's competitiveness.
Fernando Alonso, R2904
Free practice 1: 16 laps, 1:34.148 on lap 11, P10
Run 1: 6 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 5 laps, same hard tyres, change to front suspension
Run 3: 4 laps, same hard tyres, change to rear suspension
Free Practice 2: 24 laps, 1:32.774 on lap 14, P8
Run 1: 10 laps, new hard tyres, new gear box ratios
Run 2: 8 laps, new soft tyres
Run 3: 4 laps, new soft tyres, change to front wing
Run 4: 2 laps, same soft tyres, change to front wing
Fernando: “We had a few more issues to deal with today as we lost some track time with the rain. So we probably would have liked to make a few more changes to the car and run some more laps, but there was not time. It’s difficult to judge our competitiveness as it’s only Friday and we still need to analyse the data this evening to get a better understanding of our performance. We’ve definitely improved the car, but it looks like the other teams have improved as well.”
Nelson Piquet, R2903
Free practice 1: 24 laps, 1:34.738 on lap 16, P15
Run 1: 8 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 9 laps, same hard tyres, change to tyre pressures
Run 3: 6 laps same hard tyres, change to front suspension and front ride height
Free Practice 2: 29 laps, 1:32.992 on lap 25, P10
Run 1: 11 laps, new hard tyres, new gear box ratios
Run 2: 12 laps, new soft tyres
Run 3: 5 laps, new soft tyres, change to front wing
Nelson: “The track was quite slippery early on in both sessions and the rain showers didn’t help. But we still managed to get through most of the programme, looking at the tyres and trying out some of the new parts. We still have a lot of data to go over this evening as I was running a different programme to Fernando so that the team could learn as much as possible. It feels like we are more competitive than we were at Silverstone, but it’s never easy to tell much on Friday.”
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: “We had quite a successful Friday even though we had to keep one eye on the weather! We have a number of new aero parts here and it was necessary to evaluate those, which we managed to do and we’re happy with their performance. In terms of the tyres, they seem to be performing in the same way for all the teams: the soft is working much better than we expected, but the hard tyre is a little difficult to warm up. Overall we are quite happy with the progress we have made.”
