Vitaly Petrov is confident that there is more performance to come from Renault tomorrow after setting 12th-fastest time in free practice for the Australian Grand Prix.
The Russian was eight-thousandths of a second faster than teammate Nick Heidfeld and was upbeat about the progress that Renault had made during the day.
"The day was quite positive," said Petrov. "We are not bad and we didn't have any mechanical problems. We did a good job and still haven't pushed. Tomorrow we will push hard."
Petrov added that the consistency of tire performance was unexpected, with the new Pirelli rubber not showing as high a level of degradation as expected.
"We were a little bit surprised by how the tires were working," said Petrov. "The only problem is warm-up because it was quite cold."
Petrov endured several off-track moments during the session, putting it down to pushing hard in difficult circuit conditions.
"It's just down to conditions," said Petrov. "You try something new, try to brake later – it's better to try in practice."