Three busy, productive days for Renault at Jerez

After three busy and productive days of testing, the Renault F1 Team brought the week’s testing to a close this afternoon at the Circuit of Jerez on the back of another day that proved rich in data.

The team arrived at the track this morning to find the circuit wet, and was expecting to conduct nothing more than wet weather acclimatisation tests on Bridgestone’s Potenza tyres. However, the weather cleared by midday, and the racing line soon dried to allow the team to pursue its testing programme.

After running in the wet, Giancarlo and Heikki therefore resumed their programmes and concentrated primarily on car set-up during the afternoon. The Italian also had the target of accumulating mileage with the new gearbox, which he successfully accomplished.

By the end of he day, the drivers had completed a total of 159 laps and were sixth and seventh on the timesheets, Heikki setting a best lap of 1:20.372 and Giancarlo in 1:20.390.

The team will now enjoy a well-deserved weekend off after completing day 6 of 9 in the pre-Christmas programme. Chief Test Engineer Christian Silk summarised the day’s events: “This was a good final day’s running for us, which was unexpected given the conditions this morning. But we ended up making good progress, the new gearbox ran well, and we found some more interesting set-up ideas that we can investigate more fully next week in our final test before Christmas. We will be working hard until the end of the final day’s running.”

Giancarlo and Heikki will be back on track next week, in Jerez once more, for the team’s final pre-Christmas test.