Renault Sport Formula One Team ended the first day of the Formula 1 Gran Premio de España Pirelli 2017 with the seventh and eighth fastest times, a 1min 21.687secs thanks to Nico Hulkenberg and a 1min 21.992secs thanks to Jolyon Palmer. Sergey Sirotkin experienced his second taste of the R.S.17 in a Grand Prix session, however his run in Jolyon's car in FP1 was cut short due to a water leak.

In FP1, Sergey suffered from a water leak, limiting him to ten laps using Pirelli's Hard (orange) compound tyres. Nico's FP1 ran to order with set-up assessments and evaluations, using Pirelli's Hard and Medium (white) compounds. Nico and Jolyon ran with the Medium and Soft (yellow) tyres in FP2.

Nico Hulkenberg: "A solid Friday for us. We completed our usual programme and there were no dramas with the car. As usual, there are areas we are working on to improve for qualifying tomorrow and we know where some extra pace can be found. It was a real struggle to find grip today so I was presently surprised that we showed reasonable relative pace. If we can carry this through to tomorrow and the race it could be a decent weekend."

Jolyon Palmer: "It was good to get out in the car for the afternoon after sitting out in the morning. The car feels a lot better when using the Soft tyre as the balance on the Medium wasn't too great. We had a productive session with a strong tally of trouble-free laps. I've got a few areas to work on with my engineers but overall it's been a solid afternoon."

Bob Bell, Chief Technical Officer: "Overall it was a reasonably good day for us. The Soft tyre suited us best today with the underlying performance of the car demonstrated by both Nico and Jo in the afternoon FP2 session. In the morning, we struggled more for pace with the harder compounds which weren't particularly friendly to our car balance. It was also a disappointing morning for Sergey who suffered from a water leak stopping his session prematurely. Fortunately, he did get sufficient track time to gain a feel for the car and his feedback was consistent with that of Nico's on the other side of the garage."

Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona, here.