
In spite of pushing the development of the R25 until the very last race of the 2005 season, Renault had its R26 ready before Christmas for static testing. The car ran on the date planned 12 months beforehand, 10 January 2006, and by just two weeks later, there were two new cars available for the test team to work with. What's more, the policy of only running the engine in the new car - quite late relative to its competitors - appears to have done Renault no harm.
"It has been a tough winter, with some very demanding engineering and logistics tasks to manage," explained chassis technical director Bob Bell. "Since then, though, our strong performance in winter testing has given everybody a genuine boost in motivation. It has been an intensive winter of preparation, and we sincerely believe we have a strong chance of successfully defending our championships."
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