Formula One news

Renault takes step forward at Barcelona

The Renault F1 team completed a three-day test programme at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya on Wednesday evening happy that it had made another step forward in the development of its 2007 car.

The final day was not without drama. Giancarlo Fisichella suffered a mechanical failure towards the end of the morning, and was only able to begin the major part of his programme in the afternoon. 

Heikki Kovalainen was scheduled to complete a major set-up development programme, but his day was cut short by mechanical problem that proved to be minor, but required lengthy work on his car. 

"This was once again a very busy test for the team, with race and qualifying simulations on the first day, followed by set-up programmes on the next two," explained Renault's chief test engineer Christian Silk. "We got through a lot of the programme and made some good progress, but we still have some unanswered questions - which is why we are looking forward to testing in Bahrain next week. We are taking a step forward at each test, we are feeling more confident about our package, and that was the case again this week. We will use the data collected this week in Barcelona as the starting point for our work next week. Conditions will be the hottest we have encountered so far, and we will be able to focus on doing plenty of set-up work with the car. The first race is approaching quickly, so there's no time to lose!"

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