MARCH 24, 2005

Renaults at Silverstone

While Franck Montagny and Heikki Kovalainen were busy testing for Renault F1 at Paul Ricard, some observers were rather surprised to see Jose-Maria Lopez running up and down Hangar Straight at Silverstone in another Renault. The current testing agreement between the teams means that they restrict themselves to testing at one track at a time and do not have simultaneous tests.

In fact, there is no covert activity going on. The cars being run up and down by Lopez were a pair of old R24 which were being shaken down in preparation for Renault's F1 demonstration runs which will take place at most of the World Series by Renault events around Europe and at a number of street events, similar to the runs that have been done in Madrid and Lyons.

The cars completed less than 10 miles in total and, just to make sure there were no problems, all the other teams were notified in advance about what was happening.