2007 Bahraini GP, Friday - 13 APR 2007
The ING Renault F1 Team made a solid start to this weekend's
2007 Bahraini Grand Prix today at the Sakhir circuit.
Giancarlo Fisichella
Free Practice 1: P14, 1:35.697, 17 laps
Free Practice 2: P15, 1:34.796, 34 laps
Fastest Lap on Hard Tyre: 1:35.697
Fastest Lap on Soft Tyre: 1:34.796
Heikki Kovalainen
Free Practice 1: P12, 1:35.474, 21 laps
Free Practice 2: P12, 1:34.585, 33 laps
Fastest Lap on Hard Tyre: 1:35.474
Fastest Lap on Soft Tyre: 1:34.585
Making full use of the available three hours of running
on a Friday, both drivers completed nearly 300 km as they
worked through busy programmes of comparison between the hard
and soft tyres, and set-up changes. Although the final positions
appear poor, the feeling within the team was encouraging as
both drivers felt the car to be more consistent than last
week in Sepang. The challenge now will be to consistently
reproduce these positive handling characteristics through
the rest of the weekend.
Giancarlo Fisichella
My long run in the second session was very consistent and
the feeling with the car was good. And then, on my quick lap
at the end, I ran wide, so I know there is more performance
to come over a single lap. The car felt more consistent to
drive, but it felt good on Friday last week as well –
then we struggled in qualifying. So our challenge will be
to produce a good level of performance tomorrow. It will still
be a very close fight to get into the top ten, but I think
we had a good day today, and hopefully that can help us to
a better result tomorrow.
Heikki Kovalainen
The final positions look worse than they did last week, but
I think that the feeling about our competitiveness is much
better. The car is better to drive than last week, and the
changes we made definitely took us in the right direction
during the two practice sessions. I am feeling more comfortable
as well, so all in all I am quite happy. Tomorrow will be
tough, but that is the situation we are in at the moment,
and we will be fighting hard to get into the final round of
qualifying.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
Although we were disappointed not to make it into the final
round of qualifying last weekend, we nevertheless felt it
was the correct decision to continue working on the car while
running high fuel loads. This appears to have been vindicated
today, as we made some reasonable improvements to the car
during the two practice sessions. The times for the entire
field show that the grip levels are much lower than they were
during the final pre-season tests, but the relative competitiveness
of our long runs was quite encouraging. Overall, we can be
reasonably satisfied with our day.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations
We last tested at this circuit over a month ago, and since
then we have competed in two Grands Prix, and learned more
about how to get the best out of the engine. That mean our
work today focused on transposing this new knowledge onto
the baseline we established during six days of testing at
this circuit before the season began. The engines performed
faultlessly, the straightline speeds were competitive, and
the lap-times reasonable. Just like in Sepang, we fully expect
to have a challenging weekend ahead, as there are no miracles
in Formula 1, and improvements come with time and hard work.
But we have made the best possible start, which we will look
to build on tomorrow and on Sunday.
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