A lot of work done for Renault despite interruptions

The ING Renault F1 Team was back in action today for the first of three days testing at Silverstone just 48 hours after taking the chequered flag in Sunday’s French Grand Prix. The Silverstone test marks the beginning of the team’s preparations for next week’s British Grand Prix on the very same circuit.

Nelson Piquet was in the car today, fresh from scoring his maiden points in the team’s home race. He began working on the team’s busy technical programme by completing basic set-up work to dial the car into the circuit in preparation for next week’s race.

With beautiful weather conditions prevailing throughout the day, the team was able to complete a valuable day’s work, completing a total of 68 laps with just a few unscheduled interruptions to the programme. Nelson will remain in the R28 for his final day of running tomorrow before Fernando Alonso takes over for the final day on Thursday.

Nelson Piquet: “The track conditions were quite green and dirty to begin with, but once the track cleaned up it was fine. We spent the day working on the set-up of the car, which went well and towards the end of the day the car had improved a lot. We had a few interruptions and so didn’t do as much running as we could have, but it’s a good basis for tomorrow when we will continue with the work we started today.”

Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: “We go quite a lot of work done today, and although we had a few difficulties during the day, we were able to cover a lot of the stuff that we needed to. We concentrated on basic pre-Grand Prix set-up work, as well as some aerodynamic testing, and started some tyre evaluation, which we will continue in the coming days.”

Nelson Piquet R28-04, 68 laps, 350 km, fastest lap 1:21.797