Jerez Testing, Day 1, 15/03/2009

The ING Renault F1 Team began its final pre-season test today at the Circuito de Jerez in the south of Spain as Fernando Alonso completed 40 laps of the Spanish circuit. Warm and sunny conditions greeted the team today giving ideal conditions for testing, however the team’s running was cut short in the morning when a trip through the gravel trap called for some repairs to the front end.

The afternoon was more productive as Fernando began the team’s aero programme and completed some practice starts.

Fernando remains in the R29 for his final day tomorrow when he will continue working on the set-up of the car and preparing for the Australian Grand Prix.

Fernando Alonso: “Unfortunately I made a mistake this morning which was a shame as we lost a lot of track time, but sometimes this happens in testing when you are looking for the limits of the car. This afternoon the team put the car together as soon as possible and we tried to complete our main priorities for the day, which was testing some new parts on the car. In the end we managed to do it and we were pleased with the results, although we certainly would have liked more laps. Tomorrow we will try and recover some of the time we lost today.”

Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: “We had a difficult start to the day, but the guys did a good job to get the car back out again for the afternoon. What is important is not how many laps you do, but what you learn in them and we’re quite happy with how things went. We had some new things to try out and the performance of the car was good so overall we achieved our priorities for the day.”