Formula One news

Renault strong at Shanghai

Renault began its preparations for Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix today as Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet completed productive free practice programmes finishing the day second and third fastest.

"We were able to complete our programme without any problems and we now have lots of interesting data, which will allow us to approach the rest of the weekend positively," said Alonso. "We still have some things to improve, but we have clearly made progress today."

Nelson Piquet commented, "I gained a lot from the three hours of practice available today. I did a lot of laps and collected some interesting data that I'm now going to examine with my engineers. The balance of the car can still be improved, but I'm sure that this is something we can work on tomorrow during the final free practice session."

Engineering director Pat Symonds added, "We ran our usual Friday program today. Nelson quickly got on top of learning the circuit and did some useful testing work. Our evaluation of the tyres shows them to be very similar, but the balance of the car is not yet where we want it to be."

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