Formula One news

Renault rueing poor Friday weather

Fernando Alonso had hoped for bright conditions at the Nürburgring on Friday, as wet spells on a dull day in Germany interrupted teams' programmes for setting up cars in the first two free practice sessions of the weekend. His Renault team ended the day positively, however, with both cars finishing up in the top ten.

After being outraced by team-mate Nelson Piquet at Silverstone last time out, Fernando Alonso is looking to make amends in this weekend's Germany Grand Prix but laments the less than ideal conditions witnessed on Friday. "We had a few more issues to deal with today as we lost some track time with the rain," the Spaniard explained. "We probably would have liked to make a few more changes to the car and run some more laps, but there was not time to do so.

Piquet's sunglasses of Thursday were not required on Friday

"It's difficult to judge our competitiveness as it's only Friday and we still need to analyse the data this evening to get a better understanding of our performance - we've definitely improved the car but it looks like the other teams have improved as well."

"The track was quite slippery early on in both sessions and the rain showers didn't help," continued Brazilian Piquet, who rounded out the top ten in the second session. "We still managed to get through most of the programme, looking at the tyres and trying out some of the new parts. We still have a lot of data to go over this evening as I was running a different programme to Fernando so that the team could learn as much as possible. It feels like we are more competitive than we were at Silverstone, but it's never easy to tell much on Friday."

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