Nick Heidfeld was the first driver to tackle reliability issues with his car after only 6 laps of running in FP1, with the front-right wheel of his R31 locking up under braking. The problem hampered his progress throughout the remainder of the session, as he had to park his car in the Renault garage.
Only minutes later, Petrov was unluckier and hit the gravel trap at the exit of Turn 9, after the front-left side of his challenger failed. While initially believed the problems were braking-related, an internal investigation shortly after the morning running showed otherwise.
“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,” said Allison in the afternoon, according to Autosport.
“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.”
Initially, the team did not plan to run either car in the afternoon, planning to focus on resolving the issues. Heidfeld eventually got to run for 16 laps for the 8th best time of the day, while his teammate Petrov was 13th, after 17 laps.
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