Malaysian GP: Renault Friday practice notes

A solid first day's work for the Mild Seven Renault F1 Team in Sepang, Malaysia. Both of today's practice sessions were centred upon tyre evaluation for Sunday's race, a programme which was successfully completed by each driver in spite of numerous on-track disruptions in the form of traffic and yellow flags.

Giancarlo Fisichella:

"The car was quick on the first lap, but then began over-steering too much, which made it hard to set consistent times on the runs. Both tyre types seemed quite similar in performance, and we will have to analyse our data carefully this evening in order to make the right selection. There is still work to do tomorrow morning to find the best set-up for the race, but I think that our basic level of performance is good."

Fernando Alonso:

"Running on Friday is only ever about one thing, and that's choosing the correct race tyre. Both tyre types had good performance and consistency, so the choice will not be easy. The car handling was quite nervous, but the level of grip on the circuit was also pretty low today."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering:

"Our tyre evaluations were somewhat compromised by traffic and lots of yellow flags, but we will nevertheless be able to get the information we need from them to choose our tyres. Neither car is particularly well balanced at this stage, but in Malaysia, we always need to tune the car set-up in order to counteract the fact that in high temperatures, the cars are inherently more prone to oversteer. We will carry out that tuning tomorrow morning."

Giancarlo Fisichella
Chassis: R25-03
6th position, 16 laps, 1:35.841

Fernando Alonso
Chassis: R25-04
9th position, 15 laps, 1:36.103

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