Reactions – Renault Unlucky in Rainy Weather

The Renault F1 Team was back on track today at the Circuit de Catalunya, near Barcelona, to continue preparations for its 2008 season. The team has set up base in the Catalonian capital for six days of testing over the next two weeks, two important sessions as they will be the last before the official start of the 2008 season at the Albert Park circuit, for the Australian Grand Prix, in just under a month now.

Weather conditions were much less favorable today than what the team experienced last week in Jerez. Under a cloudy sky and on a wet track, the team began this morning’s work session, which was interrupted several times by showers. The team therefore decided to revise its schedule for this restart day and was consequently unable to complete its initially planned setup tests for today.

The two main drivers, Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet, saw their day’s program shrink considerably due to the poor track conditions. They both completed a few laps to gather some data on the wet track and carried out various checks on their car’s onboard systems. Despite the few kilometers covered today, the team remains optimistic and hopes to make the most of the next two days of testing.

Fernando Alonso: « It was cold and the track was wet today, so it didn’t make sense to do a lot of laps. We wanted to take advantage of these track conditions to test the R28 but it was so slippery that we didn’t want to do many laps. We waited this afternoon for the conditions to improve, which ultimately didn’t happen, so we decided to shorten our program. »

Nelson Piquet: « The weather has greatly limited our program today. I did a few laps but there wasn’t much to learn from it and we preferred to wait for track conditions to improve over the next two days to continue our program calmly. »

Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: « Our program was interrupted by the weather and we didn’t learn much today in the end. In this kind of context, you just have to try to adapt your program to do the best you can, so we tried to complete some runs on a wet track to check the car’s balance and conduct some checks on the onboard systems. »

According to the Renault F1 Team