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30 July 2010

Renault enjoyed a solid start to the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend after Vitaly Petrov and Robert Kubica posted top seven times during Friday practice.

Rookie driver Petrov proved to be quicker of the pair during the day as he set an impressive fifth quickest time during the second session – putting him as best of the rest behind Red Bull and Ferrari.

With the Russian under increasing pressure to perform in order to keep his seat for 2011, a strong showing this weekend could go some way towards securing his future and the 25-year-old said he was pleased with the way things had started.

“It was a good day of practice and I found a good balance with the car,” he said. “I know this track well and, with the updates we have here, the car feels much better. In the morning we did some basic set-up work and in the afternoon I tried some new parts, including our new rear wing which has much more downforce.

“I ran with both tyre compounds and the track conditions were not too bad, which helped us. Tomorrow morning we still need to keep working away little by little to be ready for qualifying.”

Team-mate Robert Kubica ended the day two places behind Petrov in seventh and insisted it was a day that had gone as planned.

“It was a fairly normal Friday for us. We tried to get as much information as we could and we were quite lucky with the weather because I think there was quite a lot of rain close to the track, but we got away with two dry sessions, which was what we needed.

“The track was pretty good straight away, so we were able to have consistent driving conditions throughout the day. We tried to get a feeling for the two tyre compounds and the different parts on the car.”