FP1 & FP2 - Italian GP report: Renault Sport F1

Key practice points:

— F1 back at the ‘Cathedral of Speed’, the Autodromo di Monza, where over 75% of the lap is taken at full throttle
— Monza places an emphasis on outright speed and top end performance, with the ICE put through its toughest test so far this year
— The Renault Energy F1-2014 performed well. Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel demonstrated a strong relative long run pace and finished with the sixth quickest time in FP1 and seventh in FP2
— High mileage count for Scuderia Toro Rosso at its home track, with over 800km completed
— Reliable performances from Lotus F1 Team and Caterham F1 Team. Charles Pic deputized for Romain Grosjean at Lotus in FP1 while Roberto Merhi debuted in the morning, replacing Kamui Kobayashi

Rémi Taffin, head of track operations:

It’s good to be back at Monza, a real test of where we are versus the competition and how far we have come since the start of the year.

The final timesheets only give a small glimpse of the bigger picture today. The long run pace on the Red Bull cars is good and on a par with the overall performance we demonstrated at the last race in Belgium. The car balance is more difficult to find here as the big stops of the chicanes destabilize the rear, particularly in low downforce settings. We started off with the same maps as Spa and although there are some refinements to make tonight, we confirmed the direction is still correct and, importantly, that the straight line speed performance is still there.

Overall things have gone well and we have gathered even more information on the PU in conjunction with the low aero downforce configuration. The new software evolutions introduced this weekend have also given us a step forward in energy management and power optimisation. There have been a couple of minor issues, but that is mainly due to the age of the parts we are running at this point in the season. With this in mind, everything should be better tomorrow when we update the parts.

We know that Monza places an overarching emphasis on top speed, and we may struggle over the one lap pace, but we are not that far off and seem to be in a similar position as Spa. We’ve got to maximize the opportunities we have and be ready to seize any that come our way in Quali and the race on Sunday.