The Renault is happy with its work following the first two practice sessions of this weekend’s opening round of the season in Austrlia. Fernando Alonso rounded the day off in 12th position, with team-mate Piquet struggling in 19th. Both drivers, like the majority of the field, suffered with a lack of grip on the ‘green’ Albert Park circuit. “At last, after lots of winter testing, we have started the 2009 season,” Alonso said. “We concentrated on the car setup in hot conditions, without being too concerned by what our competitors were doing. We now have lots of valuable information and, as usual, we will go over that this evening. We are missing some grip but we have some ideas about how we can overcome those issues - I’m still confident, and we should deliver a better performance tomorrow.”
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The Renault team’s testing programme is continuing in Barcelona this week, having travelled north from Jerez. Fernando Alonso, who took over driving duties from team-mate Piquet yesterday, is satisfied with the latest performance of the R29. Improved weather conditions in Cataluña have allowed the teams to see sunshine on Tuesday. Alonso focussed on more setup options for the car as well as various options for its mechanical balance. “It was another good day for us,” Fernando, who set the eighth fastest time, explained. “Again we covered lots of laps as we continue to get ready for the start of the season. The track conditions were good and we tried lots of things with the setup, which has given us lots of useful data to look through. We also worked on the aerodynamic and mechanical balance of the car, with some interesting results.”
Renault driver Fernando Alonso demonstrated the team’s pace on the fourth day of testing in the south of Spain. The former double F1 champion set a fastest lap of 1.19.945, three tenths ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen. Alonso drove 129 laps of the circuit to rack up more vital mileage on the R29: “I’m very happy with the results from this test as we’ve had two trouble-free days, a very consistent car and the work we have done has been very useful. It was really windy today, especially from mid-morning onwards”, Alonso said. Renault have now completed their Jerez programme and their next testing takes place with the rest of the teams in Barcelona next week. Räikkönen focussed on set-up and reliability of the Ferrari F60 on his way to second place, and will again be at the wheel tomorrow.