Nick Heidfeld has moved tantalisingly close to securing a race drive for the 2011 season.<\/p>\n
The prime candidate to replace injured Robert Kubica, 33-year-old German Heidfeld tested the Renault R31 at Jerez on Saturday and topped the timesheet.<\/p>\n
Team boss Eric Boullier said he had made a “very positive” impression.<\/p>\n
Heidfeld told F1’s official website that he had started the day with the aim of doing his “best to get me a future drive”, and ended up kicking off the new car’s development programme.<\/p>\n
“I think that the car was already different in the afternoon from where I’d picked it up in the morning.\u00a0 I think we’ve improved it over the course of a test session,” he said.<\/p>\n
Heidfeld’s pace was also obvious, as after 15 laps he was already six tenths faster than his potential 2011 teammate Vitaly Petrov.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I think I’ve done a good job,” said the former Prost, Sauber, Jordan, Williams and BMW driver.<\/p>\n
“What others interpret into that time is not up to me,” he added.<\/p>\n
Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel admitted Heidfeld “looked pretty good” in the black and gold Lotus-sponsored car at Jerez.<\/p>\n
“That the Renault seems pretty competitive we’ve already seen in Valencia,” added the Red Bull driver, “and his life as a pensioner obviously can wait!”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nick Heidfeld has moved tantalisingly close to securing a race drive for the 2011 season. The prime candidate to replace injured Robert Kubica, 33-year-old German Heidfeld tested the Renault R31 at Jerez on Saturday and topped the timesheet. Team boss Eric Boullier said he had made a “very positive” impression. Heidfeld told F1’s official website …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,5262,5340,98,2826],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11010,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11009\/revisions\/11010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}