FP1 & FP2 - Abu Dhabi GP report: Renault F1

Renault Sport Formula One Team opened the final race of the 2016 Formula One season with Jolyon Palmer leading the team’s charge at the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Jolyon posted the fifteenth-fastest time of the day at the Yas Marina Circuit with a 1mins 43.272secs, whilst Kevin Magnussen was twentieth-fastest with a 1min 44.117secs.

Kevin Magnussen

“We tried a few different things with the car today and we still have work to do. I don’t think we’re a million miles away from where we want to be, equally there’s still clear improvements to be made so we’ll be looking at that ahead of practice and qualifying tomorrow.”

Jolyon Palmer

“Today went pretty well. We have a good balance and all we have to work on is minimising the tyre degradation with a heavy fuel load. I feel that we’re in a pretty decent place with the car; there’s still some fine-tuning to be done, however we’re in the right ballpark.”

Bob Bell, Chief Technical Officer

“We completed most of our programme today however we did miss out on some time with Kevin in the first session due to a water leak, and then his long-run on the soft tyres was compromised by a flat-spotted tyre. The super and ultra soft tyres look to both be pretty short-lived from what we’ve seen so far so we have some number crunching yet to do.”