Formula One news

Renault happy after second day

Renault remained in Barcelona today to continue with its winter testing programme. Both R28s were in action again with Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet on driving duty. 

Both drivers completed their programmes as planned and enjoyed a productive day. With good reliability on both cars, it was the chance to put more miles on the R28. Fernando covered a total of 115 laps, setting a best time of 1'22:938, while Nelson similarly recorded 115 laps, almost double a race distance, with a best lap of 1'23:002.

"The track conditions were not great today, but we did not have any problems and I did lots of laps, so we have lots of data that we will have to go through tonight with the engineers," said Alonso. "We will finish our programme tomorrow for the last day here in Barcelona, and I hope we can continue improving our understanding of the new car."

Nelson Piquet commented, "It was a good day for me as I completed my programme and drove for the whole day, which was what I needed. I'm feeling more comfortable with the car and we are definitely making progress. We did some practice starts and pitstops at the end of the day because without traction control a lot of things have changed and we need to get used to it."

Chief test engineer Christian Silk added, "Today was a positive day and we achieved good mileage with both cars, without any problems. I was happy with the performance of both drivers and we learnt a lot about the car performance-wise, which has given us lots of interesting data to work with tomorrow. We did some long runs this afternoon with Nelson, so I'm very pleased with the day overall as we achieved the majority of our objectives."

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