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Barcelona 04

Gran Premio Marlboro de España

09/05/2004

07/05/2004

Renault Making Progress

Fernando Alonso Fifth And Jarno Trulli Eighth After A Day Without Any Major Problems

Work Still To Do On The Car Set-up

The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team experienced no major problems during the opening day at the Spanish Grand Prix. The main focus of today's programme was on tyre choice, which was completed in spite of some light rain during the afternoon session. The set-up of the two cars still needs to be improved, but fifth and eighth places for Alonso and Trulli respectively carry the promise of a strong result on Sunday.

Fernando Alonso, 5th
"A normal Friday from my point of view, without any problems. It's great to be back in Spain again and to see the fans - even today there were thousands of them around the circuit. On the technical side, we worked on the tyres, which was our priority. The handling of the car still needs to be improved because it is a little nervous at the rear, but we will work on it tonight. I am optimistic that once we have corrected these small problems, we can be even more competitive."

Jarno Trulli, 8th
"It was actually quite a difficult day for me, with several problems that disrupted my programme. In terms of set-up, the car is lacking grip but I think overall grip levels will improve as the weekend goes on, and we know in which direction we need to work this evening in order to improve the set-up. Given these small problems, I think we can be positive for the rest of the weekend."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering:
"As usual on Friday, we concentrated on tyre choice, which means the car balance is still in need of some fine-tuning. The spots of rain during the second session made life busy but luckily the tyre choice is clear. Both cars stopped a little before the end of the session with minor technical problems, but this did not cost us too much."

Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Operations:
"We ran a typical Friday programme today, with our priorities being to make the tyre choice and fine-tune the engine calibration and performance. We didn't have any major incidents and tomorrow we will begin to learn exactly where we stand relative to our competitors."