Barcelona Testing, Day 1,
The ING Renault F1 Team begins its final pre-season
test in Barcelona
Fernando Alonso, R28-03, 79 laps, 368 km, fastest lap: 1'23.021
Nelson Piquet, R28-01, 86 laps, 400 km, fastest lap: 1'23.609
The ING Renault F1 Team returned to Barcelona today to begin
its final week of pre-season testing. The team was operating
two R28s with Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet on driving
duty.
Members of the race team are in Barcelona this week as the
team conducts its final rehearsal before travelling to the
opening Grand Prix in Melbourne, Australia in three weeks
time. The team was therefore operating with a Grand Prix set-up
and concentrated on running through race procedures.
Having endured wet conditions during the previous week, the
team was again greeted by damp conditions this morning, and
it was not until the middle of the morning that the team was
able to switch to dry tyres. The team was still able to conduct
race simulation work in the morning and ran through grid procedures
as both drivers sampled the wet conditions early on.
For the afternoon, the conditions improved and the focus
of the team shifted to pit-stop practice. In all close to
20 pit stops were carried out. The team will remain in Barcelona
for the next couple of days to continue with preparations
for the 2008 season.
Fernando Alonso: "We spent most of
the day doing pit stop practice with the mechanics and everything
went ok; no problems. It was important to do this to get everybody
ready for the first race in Australia. The track was wet in
the morning, just like last week, but it did not affect what
we were working on and we are happy with the work we completed."
Nelson Piquet: "Today was a chance
for the team to try out its procedures and to prepare for
the first race of the season. We did some wet-weather running
in the morning, but it was all part of the simulation work
we had planned and was mainly for the engineers to learn about
strategy. We were only simulating procedures, so we were not
really pushing that much today. Towards the end of the day
we were able to do a little bit of work on the performance
of the car and started looking at the set-up, which we will
continue tomorrow."
Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: "Obviously
the weather was not great again, but it did not affect our
programmes. We did some race simulation work in the morning,
and pit-stop work in the afternoon, which was all fine. Towards
the end of the day we managed to get out for a final run to
get a feel for the balance of the car and that went well.
So a good first day's testing, which should put us in a good
position to get on with the main programme tomorrow."
DRIVER - TEAM - BEST LAPS
1 HAMILTON McLaren 1'22.276 78
2 RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1'22.319 82
3 SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1'22.428 83
4 NAKAJIMA Williams 1'22.724 54
5 KOVALAINEN McLaren 1'22.852 71
6 ROSBERG Williams 1'22.974 108
7 ALONSO ING Renault F1 Team 1'23.021 79
8 HEIDFELD BMW 1'23.075 75
9 SUTIL Force India 1'23.091 62
10 WEBBER Red Bull Racing 1'23.115 71
11 VETTEL Toro Rosso 1'23.188 95
12 LIUZZI Force India 1'23.239 43
13 GLOCK Toyota 1'23.270 70
14 KLIEN BMW 1'23.442 42
15 PIQUET ING Renault F1 Team 1'23.609 86
16 KOBAYASHI Toyota 1'23.880 29
17 BARRICHELLO Honda 1'24.460 115
18 WURZ Honda 1'23.667 109
19 COULTHARD Red Bull Racing 1'24.826 25
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