02/09/2016
NEWS STORY
Renault Sport Formula One Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Palmer completed full uninterrupted programmes today at a sunny Autodromo di Monza in preparation for the Formula 1 Gran Premio Heineken d'Italia 2016. In a trouble-free day, both drivers were able to accumulate strong lap tallies as they ran through their programmes of data accumulation. Kevin ended the day as the faster of the two drivers with a 1min 25.555secs as his best lap.
A straightforward day with both drivers completing their programmes as scheduled. Both Kevin and Jolyon used Pirelli's soft tyres in the morning, in both 2016 specification and prototype iteration. In the afternoon session Kevin used the prototype (soft), soft and super soft compounds. Jolyon used the medium, prototype (soft) and super soft compounds for his afternoon session.
Kevin Magnussen: "The car was a bit of a handful in the morning so we worked on dialling out the understeer and improving the ride to enable faster and more consistent laps. We got ourselves to a better balance for the afternoon and the degradation was better than we expected. Physically I feel fine in the car, it's just like being back in the office, so there are no areas of concern in that regard. Tomorrow we want to be further up the order as Sunday should be an interesting race."
Jolyon Palmer: "We've not set the world alight for pace today but we've been able to work through our programme and we're confident to be able to take a step forward tomorrow. It's a great track and it feels really special to blast through the trees. We saw in Spa that we could improve significantly between Friday and Saturday so we're looking for something similar here in Monza."
Bob Bell, Chief Technical Officer: "We completed a full programme today with the cars, drivers and team performing exactly as required. In our evaluations we played particular attention to the performance of the Pirelli super soft compound tyre as it's a step softer than we'd usually see for Monza and we were pleasantly pleased at its performance opportunities. As usual, we'll scour the data accumulated with the objective of being faster on track for tomorrow's qualifying session."