Marcus Ericsson: "I’m pleased with how my first day on track in Bahrain went. 98 laps is obviously very good news in terms of reliability, and it also means I’ve passed the 300kms I needed to do to qualify for a Superlicence. The boys have worked really hard today and we’ve pretty much had no issues which meant I could just get on with the program, and that was the main goal for today.
"Performance-wise there’s still a lot more to come, both from the car and the engine. The times today didn’t really mean anything, and although it’s always nice to put in a quicker time, we’ve been doing pretty long runs all day and just working through the plan. Now I can’t wait to get back in the car again and hopefully our reliability record so far will hold up."
Cedrik Staudohar, Track Support Leader, Renault Sport F1: "Another positive day and 98 laps for Marcus means we have managed to complete a lot more of the program we set for this test. For most of the day we were focused on long runs, continuing to try different Power Unit maps that are helping us improve the driveability of the package, something that is of critical importance with the increased torque we have this year. It is also good to have that much mileage with Marcus after the limited running we had with him in Jerez. Tomorrow we will continue to increase the performance output of the Power Unit and aim for a similar number of laps as we achieved today."