Electrical gremlins limits Kovalainen programme

The ING Renault F1 Team completed a successful day's work today in Jerez, continuing its first full test with the new R27 car. Two R27 chassis were once again available for race drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen.

Following on from his completion of a successful programme of reliability running yesterday, Fisichella began work on initial set-up changes with the new car today. He made good progress with his work, in spite of an on-track stoppage during the afternoon, and managed to begin working on understanding the car's reactions on the new Bridgestone Potenza tyres.

Heikki Kovalainen's day got off to a slow start after electrical gremlins limited his programme to just two installation laps until the afternoon. Once these problems had been resolved, he was able to complete two thirds of a race simulation, which will be completed tomorrow.

So far, the team has completed over 1300 km with the new car this week, which comfortably exceeds the total mileage during the first test session of 2006.

"We had another good day with the R27 as we started looking at some set-up changes, and understanding the handling. We made improvements through the day, and the progress confirmed the potential I could feel in the package during our reliability work yesterday."

"I think we have had a very encouraging week so far, although there are still some problems to fix, like with any new car. But that is what winter testing is all about: every problem we find here, is one that we don't have to worry about in Melbourne in two months' time."

"It was a slightly frustrating day for me because we didn't really start our work properly until this afternoon, and after that our focus was to put miles on the car. So not a perfect day for me, but at this stage, the important thing is to get a feel for the handling, and make sure the package is reliable -- it's not about setting the stopwatch on fire. We had a good end to the day with some longer runs, so hopefully we can carry on our momentum tomorrow in order to catch up on the programme."

Giancarlo Fisichella: Chassis: R27-02, 62 laps, 274 km
Fastest lap: 1:19.754

Heikki Kovalainen: Chassis: R27-01, 50 laps, 221 km
Fastest lap: 1:21.026