Good work on F-duct for Renault
It was a good Friday for the Renault Formula One Team in the Belgian Ardennes. The team focussed on finding out how the f-duct was working on the car and tyre work. Despite the good day of work, both Kubica and Petrov complained about understeer, which the team will try to sort out before tomorrow's qualifying session.
Robert Kubica, R30-03
Free Practice 1: P3, 2.02.081, 14 laps
Free Practice 2: P4, 1:49.282, 20 laps
"It was quite a good Friday for us. The conditions in first practice were pretty bad, but our main aim was to check how the f-duct system was functioning on our car. We focused on getting experience of the system, for the engineers and for myself, and to get everything working properly - and we managed to do this in spite of running in the wet. In the second session, I ran every type of tyre: extremes, intermediates and both compounds of the slicks. The car felt reasonable in all conditions, but I think we can make further improvements to the balance tomorrow."
Vitaly Petrov, R30-04
Free Practice 1: P17, 2:04.690, 15 laps
Free Practice 2: P11, 1:50.251, 24 laps
"The first target today was to find out how the f-duct was working, and it looks pretty good. You can feel a good difference on the straights when the system is operating, and we are even driving with one hand in some of the corners. It gives the drivers a bit more work to do in the cockpit, but it’s nothing difficult to handle. This afternoon, we started to do some set-up work, but the conditions were changing all the time. Hopefully we can make more progress tomorrow, in order to get really comfortable with the car ahead of qualifying."
Technical Debrief with Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer:
Track conditions were poor this morning. Could you do any useful running in the wet?
"This is the first time that we have brought our f-duct to the track, so we spent the morning learning about it in the wet conditions, completing lots of single-lap runs to gather data. It appears to be working very well, but we will need to go through the data thoroughly tonight, and check the installation on the car, to be sure everything is functioning as expected."
Robert seemed competitive in both sessions. Does that tally with your assessment? "It’s always difficult to judge performance on Friday, because you don’t know the fuel loads that other teams are running. Robert seems happy with the car, although he is still suffering from a little understeer."
How did Vitaly’s day go? "It was a very similar story. He is running exactly the same system as Robert, but he was less happy with the balance and complained of more understeer. We still have some work to do get the car balance to his liking."
What does the weather forecast say for the rest of the weekend? "In terms of the weather, it’s been a pretty normal day at Spa! The conditions for the rest of the weekend look unsettled: on Saturday, there’s a chance of rain in the morning, and a higher probability in the afternoon; and it’s the same for Sunday. As usual, we’re expecting a mixture of everything for the rest of the weekend."
Conditions are expected to remain cool. Will this be an issue for dry tyre warm-up? "I don’t think so. We ran both types of tyre this afternoon, and didn’t encounter any difficulties with either compound. Although we didn’t do a great deal of running, I don’t think cool conditions would pose a problem."
