Q & A with Nelsinho Piquet

Nelsinho Piquet: We are starting to put them slowly. Obviously we have four days of testing so we are going to test things step by step every day. But obviously it's not a case of putting them on the car and making them work straight away. You need to put them on the car and develop them slowly.

So I think the good thing of having these new bits is that you have more doors for improvement; you can improve in different ways. So at the moment we didn't find a one-second gain, but we found some doors to improve. It will be four days of data collection and a lot of experiments but I'm sure it will open a lot of doors for improvement for the car.

Q. Did you only test the new front wing today?

NP: We have a few different bits in the car and I think day after day we are going test things. We are not going to put everything at once. We are doing it step by step. We don't want to get lost so we are going to do things very straight forward and step by step to see what's good what's not good.

Q. Do you think the car is a step ahead?

NP: For sure. Even if it's not quicker straight away it means doors to open for improvement. You make new bits, you make new suspensions, you make new dampers, you make new aero bits, so there's more to improve now.

There's more where you can work to make the car better. So that's the good point. Maybe we are not going to gain straight away. I think we are going to gain a little bit straight away, but the main thing is that it's going to make it easier to make the car quicker.

Q. You were close to BMW and McLaren...

NP: A lot of people are running slicks tyres and different wings, so to be honest I cannot say. I was more worried about us. Everybody knows everybody is running different fuel loads so it's not easy to say. I was very, very happy with the car compared to the previous test here. So I'm quite happy with the day.

Q. In which areas did you see the improvements?

NP: I think the car is better everywhere. Obviously it's difficult to calculate how much better the track is since the last time we were here because they had an LMS race and then BMW drove here yesterday and cleaned up the track a little bit, so it's difficult to say if the track is much better or if the car improved a lot.

Obviously set-up wise we have improved throughout the three races, so coming back after two months obviously we would have a gain. When you gain on aero you gain everywhere. You gain on braking, you gain on speed on the corner, on the straights. So I think we gained a little bit everywhere.

Q. You tried both front wings. Did you feel the difference between the new and old one?

NP: This kind of thing you cannot feel it like that. It's very slight differences. You are never going to put one and feel a big difference. It's all little bits. When you put ten small parts together is when you feel the difference.

Q. Did the updates fixed the understeer issues?

NP: It depends on the tracks. At some tracks we run out of front wing and get a lot of understeer; some tracks you don't need too much front wing and you are okay. So it depends on the tracks, but here in Barcelona we don't have a problem at all.

Q. Can you make a prediction for the race next week?

NP: I thought the car was very good today and we have another three days of testing and there's margin to improve. I think I'm optimistic that we can put both cars in the top ten in qualifying.