Renault enjoyed a fruitful day of running as the first day of winter testing got underway in Barcelona with Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz collecting 99 laps for the team.
Hulkenberg clocked up 73 laps and ended the day fourth fastest after battling with other drivers for the top of the timesheets in the morning session; his personal best time of a 1:20:547 was set on the Medium tyre, and he finished just 0.368secs behind leader Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull).
When asked about his thoughts on the progress made by the team, Hulkenberg said: "Positive to be honest, especially if you could compare to 12 month ago, how the first morning went and how it went today is a huge difference.
"We made a lot of progress, [it was] reliable, we got through every single detail in the programme which is really unusual for the first day, not experienced that so many times, so good job and credit to our guys who prepared really well.
"I felt quite good straight away, big thing though is the resurfacing of the track has a big impact, it’s much smoother and quite high-grip circuit, so that changed the nature of Barcelona, so harder to compare to last year, but the starting point was definitely okay."
Sainz wasn't able to complete as many laps as his team-mate, as after taking over driving duties following the lunch break, temperatures dropped and rain made its way over the circuit.
Despite the lack of running, the Spaniard was happy with the lack of car issues and was certain he could have matched his team-mate's lap tally.
He added: "I think it’s been a positive day for the team when you see lap count of Nico, the lack of issues with his car, the lack of issues with my car really, if it wasn’t for the weather I’m convinced we would have done as many laps as Nico did in the morning.
"It would have meant we could have done a very very positive first day with no reliability, because of that I’m going to keep positive even though on a personal side it wasn’t the best of days."
