T01 Jerez - Day 1
Circuito de Jerez, Spain - Tuesday 5th February 2013

Driver: Giedo van der Garde, car #21
Chassis: CT03-05
Total laps: 64
Best lap: 1.21.915

Giedo van der Garde, car #21, chassis CT03-05: "First it's great to be back at work and I'm pleased with how day one on track has gone. We completed a very decent number of laps today without any major issues and I was pretty comfortable in the car straight away.

"Day one is all about making sure everything in the car works as it's supposed to and apart from a couple of minor issues with the floor we didn't really have to make any changes to the car straight out of the box. We also ran through a number of procedures that are new to me, particularly starts as we didn't do too many of those last year, but the main thing for me is the tyres. They definitely feel different to what I ran in the Friday sessions I did in 2012 and that's going to be a focus for us in the tests, to get as much as we can out of them.

"It's obviously far too early to make any judgements on the performance levels we can expect from the 2013 package but compared to the car I drove in Brazil it feels like we've made some good progress over the winter. Tomorrow will be more of the same for us - running through more procedures and a few set-up options across the range of tyres we have available here and hopefully getting in as many laps as possible."

Cyril Abiteboul, Team Principal: "I'm happy with what we have achieved today. We began day one of the test by revealing the 2013 car with its new livery and I'm very pleased with the reaction we've had from around the world to the updated car. It's always a risk changing something people feel as passionately as they do about F1 car liveries but we've had some very good responses to it and seeing it out on track proves that we made the right decision.

"Performance-wise it's too early to tell where we're going to line up this season. We're realistic enough to know that it will take a big effort to fight the teams ahead, but we are patient and we've set ourselves achievable targets for the year ahead. One of the keys to helping us reach those goals will be maximum track time in the tests so we have to aim for another three days of clear running and see what we've learnt when we get back to the factory.

"All in all it's been a good day and another bonus for us is to see how well Charles and Giedo have slotted into the team. This bodes well for the year ahead and it's great to see our driver pairing fitting in so well in the very early stages of the season."