The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team completed a successful opening day in Bahrain. Both drivers completed their programmes without incident, and the team will now work through the evening to make their tyre choice for the rest of the race weekend.

Fernando Alonso: I have no worries after the opening day: the car balance was pretty good, and we seemed quite quick. However, we must be cautious with our choices here: we have only raced at this track once, and the conditions on Friday are very different to those we will meet in the Grand Prix. The circuit today was still quite low grip, but it should improve through the rest of the weekend.

Giancarlo Fisichella: My day went quite well: there is still work to do on the balance, because the car had some oversteer during the sessions today, but the other aspects of the handling seem to be working well. It was hot out there on track, but now we have come through Malaysia, I don’t think the conditions will be a problem for the drivers in the race.

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: Our programmes both ran very smoothly today, which means we have good quality data to work with this evening. We completed more laps than usual in order to get a better handle on the tyre choice, which should help us with our analysis. The car balance was reasonable straight away today but, as always, we still have some room for improvement before tomorrow.