Nico Prost of Renault e.dams gets top slot in final testing

The pre-season testing rounds at Donington Park concluded with Nico Prost coming in the fastest and ensuring that he gets his Renault e.dams team to the top. But he was a tad lucky too as the Frenchman set his best lap of 1:30.513s during the morning session. With heavy rain falling towards the end of afternoon running, there was no opportunity for anyone to lower the benchmark.

Prost’s teammate Sebastien Buemi was the second fastest, making it a Renault e.dams one-two.

“Last week we were a bit lost but the last two days from my side have been really positive,” he said. “We had a really, really good pace. I’m quite happy but not over-confident as Abt was looking really strong, Sam Bird is looking strong. Reliability for us has been good too,” he added.

Meanwhile, at Mahindra Racing, Bruno Senna recorded the fourth fastest timing, while his teammate Nick Heidfeld who replaced Karun Chandhok could only muster a 14^th position in the pack of 15.

Prost was able to try the car at 170kw, the planned race power for season two, and was pleased by the results.“For me and my driving style I think it’s better to have more power. It makes it a lot nicer to drive. 170kw makes it more challenging,” he said.

Before the race started all the teams and drivers lined the pitlane to observe a minute’s silence in respect for Justin Wilson, who succumbed overnight to the head injuries he suffered at Pocono Pennsylvania (United States)  a couple of days earlier.

 “We could have done some things better, but the most important thing is to get ready for Beijing,” Sebastien Buemi  of Ranault e.dams said, adding that “so we were not able to show what we could do. The cars seem to be good, we’ve improved the reliability a lot, we drove in all kinds of conditions, so from that side I’m quite happy and I’m confident we can have a strong weekend in Beijing and I’m looking forward to seeing how the car behaves on a proper circuit.”

Jerome D’Ambrosio set the third fastest lap for Dragon Racing. He said: “We had a good day, obviously lap times are not too representative I think at this stage. Without putting everything together we have been relatively near the front. That’s positive but it has been a difficult last two days with the weather, we haven’t been able to go through the whole programme. I think we learnt a lot and can look forward to Beijing.”