French GP: Renault Friday practice notes

The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team completed a successful opening day of their home race weekend during the first free practice sessions in Magny-Cours. Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella completed tyre evaluation programmes during both sessions, conducting performance and endurance running to enable the team to select the best tyre type for the rest of the weekend.

Fernando's running was cut short by a cracked exhaust pipe in the second session, but overall the results of the day were encouraging, with both drivers finishing near the top of the timesheets.

Fernando Alonso:

"We had a good balance on the car right from the start of the day, and we didn't change the set-up at all. That's always a good way to start on Friday, because it means you can use your laps to test the tyres properly and work on other things. The biggest problem today was the wind, which made the handling quite unpredictable in the high-speed chicanes, and the car was not consistent lap to lap because of this. But overall, I think we look quite strong at the moment."

Giancarlo Fisichella:

"It was a good day for us -- we are very pleased with our positions after second practice. I think we are in good shape for the weekend and even though we don't know our tyre choice yet, I think we can be optimistic regardless of which tyre we choose. I had some high-speed understeer in the car which we need to work on overnight but we are in a good position."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering:

"We had a very normal Friday session, with a good balance on the cars from the word go and just some fine-tuning to complete tomorrow. The day was relatively trouble-free, although Fernando had to cut his run short this afternoon because of a cracked exhaust. The tyre test was slightly compromised by traffic, but we will be able to pick out the relevant data overnight. All in all, it was a standard Friday, and we encountered no problems that might worry us for the race."

Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Operations:

"Like our competitors, we completed a substantial number of laps today in order to get the best possible baseline for our race performance. We encountered no significant problems, and will work overnight on tuning the performance of a number of new peripheral parts that we have introduced since Indianapolis. On the technical front, today provided a substantial amount of information for the rest of the weekend; on the sporting side, I believe it showed we have the potential to be very competitive this weekend."

Fernando Alonso
Chassis: R25-04
33 laps in total
4th, 1:15.242

Giancarlo Fisichella
Chassis: R25-06
38 laps in total
55, 1:15.380

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