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Jerez
Testing, Day 3 – 08/12/06
Final day of testing for the Renault F1 Team this week in
Jerez.
The French team this evening concluded the second of its
three pre-Christmas test sessions after a busy day on track
in Jerez.
Early this morning, the team had been hoping for a relatively
straightforward programme, running its pair of 2007 race drivers
to allow them to acclimatise to Bridgestone's wet tyres in
the slippery, wet conditions that greeted the teams this morning
in southern Spain. However, as conditions continued to improve
throughout the day, the drivers were able to begin running
dry tyres before midday, meaning that both Renault drivers
got a first taste of the new tyres in tricky damp conditions,
and were still able to make good progress with their technical
programmes once the circuit had dried.
Giancarlo Fisichella's target was once again to run the maximum
number of miles possible, but today his goal was to put miles
on the new 2007 gearbox for reliability reasons. This afternoon,
once the track was completely dry, he was able to work on
car set-up, a programme he completed without incident. He
finished the day 7th fastest, after 89 laps.
Just like his team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen made the most
of the morning's wet weather to discover the new wet tyres.
He collected useful data before continuing a programme of
set-up validation. He suffered a mechanical failure early
in the afternoon, but still managed to complete his programme
and finish the day in 6th position, after setting a best time
of 1:20.372 and completing 70 laps.
Giancarlo Fisichella: "I am pleased
with how this first session went. It was important to do lots
of laps in order to learn about our new Bridgestone tyres.
I learned a lot, and I feel that I made some good progress
this week in Jerez. We will continue to improve next week,
so I am feeling pretty optimistic."
Heikki Kovalainen: "It was a difficult
but interesting session this week, because we ran in every
kind of conditions. There was a lot of data collected and
once we have analysed it, we will be able to make even more
progress next week. We worked very hard, and we know where
we are with the programme; I am feeling confident, and happy
with what we have done this week."
Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: "This
was a good final day's running for us, which was unexpected
given the conditions this morning. But we ended up making
good progress, the new gearbox ran well, and we found some
more interesting set-up ideas that we can investigate more
fully next week in our final test before Christmas. We will
be working hard until the end of the final day's running."
The Renault F1 Team will be back on track next week from
13 to 15 December, for the final test of 2006.
DRIVER - TEAM - BEST LAPS
1 BARRICHELLO Honda 1 :20.008 65
2 ROSSITER Honda 1 :20.171 108
3 HAMILTON McLaren 1 :20.325 79
4 SCHUMACHER Toyota 1 :20.339 61
5 DE LA ROSA McLaren 1 :20.342 84
6 KOVALAINEN Renault 1 :20.372 70
7 FISICHELLA Renault 1:20.390 89
8 HEIDFELD BMW 1:20.436 110
9 DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1:20.542 87
10 GLOCK BMW 1:20.785 105
11 KOBAYASHI Toyota 1:20.978 70
12 WEBBER Red Bull 1:20.985 79
13 MASSA Ferrari 1:21.143 46
14 COULTHARD Red Bull 1:21.325 63
15 BADOER Ferrari 1:21.327 43
16 SPEED Toro Rosso 1:21.327 51
17 NAKAJIMA Williams 1:23.600 16
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