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Renault's Nico Hulkenberg has stated that his team will be on course to meet all of its pre-season testing targets if it can complete the three days remaining in Barcelona without suffering any major issues.
The French squad has already struggled badly thus far - the most severe problem arose with the precautionary power unit change on Jolyon Palmer's car on Tuesday morning.
With Palmer temporarily sidelined, Hulkenberg took over at the wheel of the R.S.17 in the afternoon, eventually clocking up 58 laps in total. Afterwards, the German spoke about how Renault is committed to completing its individual testing programme, rather than looking for pure performance as its rivals are on the circuit.
"We still have a big to-do list and that's the big focus and priority right now," he said. Where we stand even at the end of this week doesn't really matter so much.
"We'll see and learn it anyway in Melbourne, but from there onwards it's a long year. We'll plug away and work from where we are. Last week we didn't get all the things done that we wanted to, so we still had quite a few carry-over items from last week which we picked up today and especially in the afternoon. More of that pretty much in the next couple of days."
Although Hulkenberg made clear that trouble-free running will be vital if Renault is to complete its programme, he also indicated that its to-do list could still get longer.
"I think that we'll pretty much get through the list but the list, there are always new things added and you're learning new things as you go," he revealed. "In this sport that's a never-ending story with the engineers and the millions of options that we have with setups and so on. I think if we have no hiccups from here then everything will be OK."
Hulkenberg is not only having to adapt to the challenges posed by the new regulations, but also to a new team, having exited Force India at the end of the year. He is carefully adjusting to his new surroundings, but still feels this has gone well so far.
"There are a lot of changes basically, a lot of new things," he explained. "New people, new working environment and all these things take time to get used to them and bed in and get to know each other. But with regards to that, I feel that we are already set up pretty well. Working together with the guys is already working quite OK. Race weekend of course is always still a little bit different, but so far it's going well."
Mason Hawker
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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