Vitaly Petrov felt that he actually benefited from being on the pit wall while Romain Grosjean drove his car during FP1 in Brazil.

12888 - Petrov enjoys time on pit wall

Renault announced that Grosjean would drive on Friday mornings at the final two races at the season, and with Bruno Senna having made way in Abu Dhabi it was Petrov's turn at Interlagos. Far from being hampered from the lack of track time, Petrov said it was "a very good experience" and that it meant he now knew what the engineers would be dealing with during a session.

"FP1 was interesting for me and it was actually a very good experience to be on the pit wall for a session," Petrov said. "It enabled me to understand better what the engineers see and what they require from the driver so I can put this knowledge to practice in future."

Once back in the car for the second session, Petrov said that the R31 was not suited to the track but that qualifying in the top ten would still be a target, however difficult it may be.

"In FP2 there were no mechanical problems, so I think my crew did a very good job to repair the car after the clutch problem in the morning. We know this is not an easy track for our car as you can see with our times. It will be difficult tomorrow in qualifying, but we work hard to try and get into Q3 but it's not going to be easy. Today we were struggling with rear traction and oversteer so we focused on improving this area as it is certainly hurting our pace."