Renault's day disrupted by bad weather conditions

The ING Renault F1 Team returned to the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona today to resume its preparations for the 2008 season. The team was again running two R28s and will remain in Barcelona for the next couple of weeks to continue with the development of the new car.

A grey and overcast sky greeted the team this morning and remained throughout the day with numerous showers hitting the circuit. As a result the team was forced to revise its testing programme and was unable to continue with its set-up programme as planned.

Both race drivers were on driving duty, but Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet were restricted to limited running by the poor conditions. Both men took the opportunity to complete laps in the rain to gather data for wet running and to assess the balance of the car on a damp track. The team also checked all the systems on the car and now turns its thoughts to the rest of the week.

Fernando Alonso: “It was cold and wet today and so there was no point in doing a lot of running. It was an opportunity to try the car in the wet, but it was so slippery that we did not do many laps. We waited in the afternoon for conditions to improve, but they did not so we ended the day slightly early.”

Nelson Piquet: “The weather was the main problem today and limited what we could do in terms of our programme. I only managed a handful of laps, but there was not much we could learn, so we will have to hope that the weather improves later in the week.”

Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: “It was a day disrupted by the weather and so we did not learn much at all really. When you have days like this you just have to adapt the programme as best you can, and so we made the most of the rain by completing some wet weather running just to check the balance of the cars and to carry out basic system checks.”

Fernando Alonso R28-01, 16 laps, 74 km, fastest lap: 1’32.820
Nelson Piquet R28-02, 8 laps, 37 km, fastest lap: 1’40.073