Renault fires up first R24!

By role
January 13 2004

The Renault F1 team finished the completion of the first R24 chassis at the factory in Enstone, UK. The R24 will be the challenger for the upcoming 2004 and it will mean significant changes to their predecessor mainly based on the change of engine architecture.

The first R24-01 chassis was assembled yesterday and was also fired up without any problems.

"We completed the build of R24-01 late yesterday afternoon, and fired up the engine as well," confirmed Technical Director Bob Bell. "No problems were reported, and we are very pleased with the results. The 'birth' went very smoothly, and the process was a credit to everybody at Enstone and Viry. This is only the beginning though. The next stage will be to get the car to Barcelona, and start confirming its performance potential on the track."

The R24 will hit the track next week on Barcelona an will be first driven by Jarno Trulli who will hand the car later on to Fernando Alonso at the end of the week.

The official presentation of the 2004 car will be at Palermo, Sicily on January 29th.