“Obviously, every hour you spend in the car you learn a lot, you get a bit more confident; it's just a natural learning process. All these tests are very important for developing the car, but also for us drivers; you only learn with time, not by people telling you or by looking at things. It's all about hours of driving the car and feeling it and getting used to things.
“If I could drive the whole week, I would be driving the whole week. Like I said, any time in the car is important; it's important for me, for the engineers – my crew is quite young too, so we're all learning a lot. I need to concentrate more on myself, and I think the team has enough experience to do what's right.”
The
Régie's executive director of engineering Pat Symonds was also quick to praise his young charge's performance at Magny-Cours, and with
Silverstone being a circuit that Piquet knows well – and around which he has triumphed – from his days spent racing in both British F3 and GP2, the Englishman is optimistic a second successive surprise could be in store.
“He could trouble even Alonso,” the 55-year-old contended. “What this result will give him is confidence. Perhaps what we will see now is the same as what we saw with [Heikki] Kovalainen last year.”
