Kovalainen expects competitive weekend

The Finn was only 11th quickest as windy conditions made driving very tricky during the 90-minute sessions.

Despite that, Kovalainen was pleased with his day's work and reckons Renault have taken a step forward that will allow them to shine this weekend.

"This was a better start to my weekend than I had in Magny-Cours," admitted the Finn. "The basic car balance felt pretty good today, but the wind always makes life difficult, because the gusts mean every car feels inconsistent from lap to lap, and corner to corner even.

"There is still work for us to do overnight to find more performance, but already from this morning to this afternoon, it felt like we made a good step forward - even through the positions don't necessarily suggest so.

"We are definitely working in the right direction, so if we can do the same again before tomorrow, we should be in pretty good shape."

Giancarlo Fisichella was also happy with his progress today, despite the conditions and the traffic making his life difficult. The Italian was 12th fastest.

"The car was quite competitive, and particularly on the long runs when the balance felt pretty good," Fisichella added.

"But I encountered quite a lot of traffic, the circuit is pretty bumpy, and you have head or tailwinds changing all the time which makes it hard to find the right braking points, so there's quite a lot of work to do, in order to understand our basic potential I think.

"But if we look at our programme, we can be happy with the number of laps we did, and the progress we made. After that, we need to make the most of the conditions, because they will be the same for everybody, and keep on moving forward with the set-up of the car."