Formula One news

Symonds has high hopes for young testers

Renault engineering chief Pat Symonds has high hopes of two youngsters his team will test this winter - World Series by Renault champion Robert Kubica and 2004 Renault V6 winner Giorgio Mondini.

"The first thing we need to do is to make sure the car they will drive is well set up. We don't want to get them a too hard task for their first drive in Formula 1," said Symonds. "Therefore the established race or test drivers of the team will set the car up just to make sure that it is working properly and that it is handling well."

"We hope to see that slowly their lap time improve, that slowly the number of mistakes they make reduces and that they have enough mental capacity left to describe what the car is doing, how it is on any particular corners," he added.

"Usually we ask the young drivers to drive for an afternoon then to think about it and to drive again the next morning but because we are a little bit tight on time for this first winter testing session we will give Kubika and Mondini each a half day to discover the car, one of them will drive in the morning and the second one will continue the tests during the afternoon," Symonds went on.

"Then the engineers will write a report at the end of the test. An objective part of the report is basically the lap time the drivers have achieved relative to the other people testing that day, their consistency but we are also interested in the engineers' feeling about the drivers' application and understanding, the feedback they were able to give concerning the chassis and the engine, their physical fitness. If we feel that there is some signs of promise in what they are doing, it is very likely that we will invite them or maybe one of them back in a more intensive test."

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