Mixed emotions - Permane
The ING Renault F1 Team’s Chief Engineer, Alan Permane, explains how qualifying went for the Enstone team. Heikki Kovalainen will start tomorrow's European Grand Prix from 7th position while team mate Fisichella will start from 13th place on the grid.
"We’re got mixed feelings. On the one hand Heikki got into the top 10 and put on a good performance. On the other, Giancarlo made a few mistakes on his last flying lap and finished too far down."
The team seems to have run into more problems than usual this weekend..."It’s true. We took quite a bit of time trying to find the right balance and determining our set-up. This was mainly due to the use of the new front wing that required a pretty different set-up. During a race weekend it’s always very difficult to fully understand the behaviour of such an important part. What’s more the track conditions didn’t help us very much. This being said I’d really like to thank Enstone for having worked flat out to produce the wing for this weekend. It was supposed to be ready for Budapest and we had two of them here yesterday already."
Finally, what’s the difference between the two compounds available this weekend?"The soft compound is about 0.3/0.4s quicker on the first lap. For the race, though, the hard tyres seem to be more consistent."
Source Renault
