2007 European Grand Prix,
The ING Renault F1 Team enjoyed a trouble-free, busy opening
day of practice for the 2007 European Grand Prix this weekend
at the Nürburgring.
Giancarlo Fisichella (R27-05)
Free Practice 1: P19, 1:35.077, 22 laps
Free Practice 2: P15, 1:34.431, 28 laps
Heikki Kovalainen(R27-02, T-car)
Free Practice 1: P18, 1:34.921, 21 laps
Free Practice 2: P16, 1:34.446, 25 laps
Giancarlo and Heikki completed busy programmes in both the
morning and afternoon sessions, conducting baseline set-up
work, comparing the two tyre types available and assessing
the new aerodynamic package available to the team this weekend.
As always, the programmes focused on race preparations on
heavy fuel loads but unusually, the drivers did not get clean,
flying laps on soft tyres at the end of the session, unlike
many other competitors. Therefore, while the headline times
may seem unimpressive, the team is satisfied with its day's
work and confident that after rigorous overnight analysis,
it will transform these preparations into a competitive qualifying
performance tomorrow.
Giancarlo Fisichella
It was a normal Friday for us. As usual, we did our race preparation
today, working to find a good baseline set-up for Sunday,
and to look at the tyres. There is still some work to do overnight
to get the balance right, and we need to improve our competitiveness
a little bit too. But we have seen many times this season,
that we are a little far away on Friday – and more competitive
in qualifying and the race. We did our job today, and completed
our programme. Now we need to follow our plans and analyse
the data in order to achieve a good level of competitiveness
in qualifying tomorrow.
Heikki Kovalainen
The main thing for us today was to do our usual tyre comparison,
which we managed and got a good answer from. The set-up programme
was busy too, and while not all the changes were positive
today, we have found the direction to go in for tomorrow.
The car is not as stable as usual at the moment, so we need
to improve that area to find more lap-time. The job now is
to get our heads down, understand where we can make the car
better for tomorrow's practice session, and to have a trouble-free
morning to prepare for qualifying.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
Just as we found last year, grip levels during first practice
were extremely low, and it was very difficult to get the car
working well in those conditions. Fortunately, the heavy rain
at lunchtime did not affect our programmes too much, and the
car was working much better in second practice. As usual,
we remained on a high fuel load throughout the day, as we
looked at the behaviour of the two types of tyre and evaluated
our new aero package.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations
Moving into the second half of the season, our technical programmes
for Friday practice are well-established, especially at a
circuit we know well such as the Nürburgring. We had
anticipated disrupted running after seeing heavy rain forecast
but, in the end, it had minimal impact on our work and the
atmospheric conditions were within normal limits. This circuit
presents the unusual characteristic of being situated at altitude,
which in fact makes life easier for certain moving parts of
the engine, but our work focused, as usual, on optimising
areas such as engine mapping and gear ratios. The day went
smoothly, with no problems, and we have a good basis from
which to fine-tune our performance ahead of qualifying.
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