Hydraulic leak expected to be cause of Renault test fire

Renault have identified the cause of a fire they suffered at the end of the second day of testing at Silverstone earlier this week.

Jolyon Palmer completed 98 laps of the British Grand Prix venue, mainly testing new suspension parts, before his Renault RS16 caught fire at the end of the day.

"The car caught fire. This looks to be the result of a hydraulic leak and we're naturally investigating what happened," said team principal Frederic Vasseur. "The fortunate thing is the fire happened on the final lap of the day so we were able to complete all we could for that day.

"There was no issue for Jo and the fire was soon extinguished."

Despite the unfortunate end to the day, Palmer was able to see the funny side of the incident, although he admitted that he did feel for the crew who had some extra work to do in the lead up to the back-to-back Hungarian and German Grands Prix.

"Although we didn't set the world alight with our lap time, we did manage to set the car itself alight which certainly wasn't part of the plan," he said. "It looks like it was a hydraulic leak, but fortunately it was all under control pretty quickly."

"It didn't affect our day's program, however, it did give the crew at the track and back at Enstone quite a bit of unexpected work to do afterwards."

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  • Country United Kingdom
  • Date of b. Jan 20 1991 (35)
  • Place of b. Horsham, United Kingdom
  • Weight 78 kg
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