ING Renault F1 Team concludes its first week of testing
in Sakhir
Heikki Kovalainen, R27-03, 86 laps, best lap: 1'32.032
Nelson Piquet Jr, R27-01, 102 laps, best lap: 1'32.334
The ING Renault F1 Team today completed its first of two
three-day pre-season tests in Sakhir, Bahrain.
The world champions enjoyed a particularly productive final
day, collecting useful data and demonstrating encouraging
levels of performance.
Heikki Kovalainen spent the day fine-tuning his preparations
before the opening race of the year in Australia in three
weeks' time. He concentrated on set-up evaluation with the
car, conductive comparative tests to find an optimum handling
balance and analysing the behaviour of the Bridgestone Potenza
tyres. At the end of the day, Heikki was fifth on the timesheets,
with a best lap of 1:32.032.
Across the garage, Nelson Piquet Jr completed his pre-season
work with further mechanical set-up testing, with the goal
of evaluating as many different alternatives as possible,
in order to collect data on chassis handling and tyre behaviour.
The Brazilian completed his programme without any problems
once again, and finished the day ninth with a best lap of
1:32.334.
Christian Silk summarised the results of the team's first
week of testing in Bahrain: "After initially working
on endurance and reliability this week, we then moved on to
a set-up programme. Everything went as well as we had hoped,
and we completed our programme without any problems. This
circuit is very different to those we have run on so far this
winter, and our engineers have managed to complete a greater
amount of testing than at any other session. Our car has been
very reliable, and the car has responded well to the different
set-up options we have studied this week. Both drivers were
very focused for all three days. For Heikki, it's an advantage
to gain further experience on the circuit where he will compete
in his third Grand Prix. As for Nelsinho, it was a good chance
to work with the race team. We have had some encouraging results
this week, and we will look to build on them next week with
Heikki and Giancarlo."
DRIVER - TEAM - BEST LAPS
1 ALONSO McLaren 1'30.994 73
2 HAMILTON McLaren 1'31.094 53
3 MASSA Ferrari 1'31.718 52
4 RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1'31.867 100
5 KOVALAINEN Renault 1'32.032 86
6 BARRICHELLO Honda 1'32.115 129
7 BUTTON Honda 1'32.137 78
8 COULTHARD Red Bull Racing 1'32.220 73
9 PIQUET Renault 1'32.334 102
10 HEIDFELD BMW 1'32.451 65
11 KUBICA BMW 1'32.475 95
12 DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1'32.553 126
13 MONTAGNY Toyota 1'32.917 110
14 WEBBER Red Bull Racing 1'33.034 73
15 TRULLI Toyota 1'33.062 104
16 SPEED Toro Rosso 1'33.255 60
17 LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1'35.868 7
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