First day of 3 in France for Renault

The place is nice, the weather usually mild and the track perfect to prepare the European campaign of the season… the Renault F1 Team is then in Paul Ricard again this week for three days of tests, which promise to be busy!

Heikki Kovalainen was the only Renault driver on track today and his programme was mainly focused on an important tyre programme with Michelin. He was able to run with the two R26 chassis available for this session and then covered 137 laps. He also set the fastest time of the day in 1: 04.927.

Lots of work in the garage as well, as told us Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer “We’ve had quite a busy day with two cars to run with just one driver! We had a few small problems today but they did not delay our programme. We worked on interesting directions for the first European races. We completed an important programme of tyre testing today and Heikki seemed quite happy with it”

Heikki Kovalainen will be joined tomorrow by Giancarlo Fisichella who will stay for the duration of the session.