Renault said that the material of a batch of components was to blame for failures on its cars during Friday practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Both Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov suffered problems with their front suspension uprights; Heidfeld's causing him to have to complete a full lap with a locked tyre, and Petrov's resulting in him spinning off the track at turn nine. Technical director James Allison said that both parts had come from a previously untested batch of components.
"Both Vitaly and Nick suffered failures under braking in the front uprights early in the first session," Allison said. "As a precaution we stopped running the cars until we had understood the problem. We quickly established that the two failed items had come from the same material batch and that nothing from this batch had run prior to today. It took a little longer to rule out other potential causes but once we were confident that the failures were related to a material problem we released the cars for the second half of afternoon practice where they ran without problem."
Heidfeld said that he was pleased with the potential the car had shown, despite not being able to do any set-up work during the day.
"Considering that we did no real set-up work today, it's quite encouraging that I was in the top ten in both sessions," he said. "We now have to concentrate on making good progress in the final practice session tomorrow morning."
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