Renault maintains two-car Q3 target
Date published : 26 Mar 2010 - 10:54:56
Renault is optimistic its pre-race target of getting two cars into Q3 on Saturday will be possible after both Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov enjoyed promising practice sessions in Melbourne.
Kubica caused a surprise by setting the pace in Friday's fully-dry opening session, before rookie Petrov took over the baton in second practice to finish with a competitive fifth-quickest time.
Chief race engineer Alan Permane says Kubica's car was working well in the first session irrespective of what fuel it was carrying relative to the others, leaving him hopeful its qualifying target can be achieved.
Robert was quickest this morning and although we don't know fuel loads of the others, we had no major complaints with the car, he said.
I said at the beginning of the weekend that the goal was to get both cars into Q3 and I still think that's a realistic target.
After showing encouraging speed in the Bahrain curtain-raiser despite its failure to register points, Renault has introduced a new front wing and changes to its rear wing onto the R30 for this weekend as it bids to establish itself clearly at the front of the queue behind the top four teams.
Permane was happy with how the upgrades affected the car's performance, although it still has a tendency to understeer.
A little bit too much understeer still, he said.
The car is quite stable at the rear, but we need to work on the front end. Both drivers are reasonably happy and the new parts are performing as expected.
Kubica, meanwhile, was satisfied with his opening day and has identified making improvements to his R30's balance as the main area to focus on overnight.
It was a good Friday, said the Pole, who slipped to 11th on the times in the second session.
This morning everything went well with just some small balance issues, so we did some set-up wok to get used to the track, which is very different to Bahrain and the tracks where we tested over the winter.
The second session was damp so we did some runs on intermediates to get a feeling for the wet conditions.
Overnight we will work to try and improve the balance so that we get the maximum from the car tomorrow.
Team-mate Petrov was experiencing the challenging Albert Park layout for the first time and acquitted himself impressively as he ran in the top-10 for both sessions.
Formula 1's first Russian believes the laps he completed in the wet conditions will prove particularly useful if rain returns on race day.
This morning the car felt pretty good and better than it did in Bahrain, Petrov revealed.
The first session was a learning experience for me as I got to know the track and did some set-up work.
We knew it was going to be wet in the second session so we went out as early as we could on the dry tyres before the rain got too heavy.
When the track was damp we did some runs to analyse a few things and to understand the balance of the car on different fuel loads. It could rain on Sunday so it was good experience to run in these conditions.
