Day 1, 01/03/2009 - 1 MAR 2009

ING Renault F1 Team and Nelson Piquet begin testing in Jerez

Nelson Piquet, R29-03, 52 laps, 230 km, fastest lap 1:22.011

The ING Renault F1 Team was back in action yesterday to begin the first of four days testing at the Jerez circuit in the south of Spain.

The team's Brazilian race driver, Nelson Piquet, was behind the wheel of the R29 as the team continued with its development programme. Conditions were cool and overcast with a light rain shower hitting the circuit after lunch, but overall the track remained dry for most of the day.

Despite losing track time with some technical issues, Nelson began evaluating new development items and worked on various set-up options, completing a total of 52 laps by the end of the day.

Nelson remains in the car for a second day of work tomorrow before Fernando joins the team for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Nelson Piquet: "We had a few issues with the car today which limited our mileage, but we still managed to evaluate some of the new parts we brought to this test. The track was improving throughout the day as we had a lot of cars running and so it should get better and better throughout the week. Looking ahead to tomorrow, the priority is to get more miles under our belt – the weather should be similar so hopefully we will get another dry day."

Christian Silk, Chief Test Engineer: "It was quite a difficult day with limited mileage due to some small problems that we had on the car. As a result we didn't get as much set-up work done as we would have liked, but the engineers still have some interesting data that they will go through this evening. The priority for the rest of the week is to continue adding mileage to the car and continuing with our set-up work."

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