Alonso upbeat on return to cockpit
Despite a chilly start to the day, the team made the most of a warm and sunny afternoon to continue with its technical program and add further miles to the car. Alonso also sampled slick tires with a car set up to best simulate 2009 settings. Despite a brief interruption to the program in the morning, the team completed its objectives for the day.
The team now looks forward to the final day of work tomorrow when Fernando will again be on driving duty.
"It was a good day and I'm happy to be back in the car," said Alonso. "Unfortunately I damaged the car a little bit in the morning and so we lost some running, but the team did a good job to repair the car quickly and I was able to run almost all of the afternoon without any problems. It was nice to run on the slick tires as they are more grippy, but when you lose the downforce from the car they don't feel massively different to grooved tires."
Renault's chief test engineer Christian Silk added, "It's good for Fernando to be back in the car and to get some experience on the 2009 tires. Fernando learnt a lot about the tires and the engineers learnt a lot from his feedback and setting the car up with him. On the technical side we continued with a similar program to yesterday, putting mileage on the car and managed to achieve the main objectives for the day."