Symonds: Renault car better than Toyota's

Renault have scored two consecutive four places in Belgium and Monza which, aided by Toyota's failure to score in those races, have allowed the former champions to be equal on points with the Japanese squad with four races left.

And Symonds reckons Renault's car is now generally stronger than Toyota's, although he admits he is expecting a very close fight in the remaining races.

"You can't get any closer than equality. Obviously, as the number of races decreases, even a constant gap becomes more difficult to deal with and so it's nice to have made up the ground we needed to so quickly," said Symonds.

"I do believe that on balance our car is better than the Toyota; it's very close and there are certainly days when they might be stronger than us and days when we are stronger than them.

"We beat them in Monza by out racing them as a team, but it's far from over and we know we are going to have a tough fight on our hands through to the end of the season."

Symonds also revealed the team will run a few new components at this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix as part of their final push for development in 2008.

"We will have the final updates for the R28 in Singapore, including a new front wing," he added.

"In previous years when we have been working on the new car in the wind tunnel, we have always hoped to see developments that we can use on the current car, but it's not the case this year because the aerodynamics for next season are so different.

"So this really is the end of the updates, other than any changes that may be made for reliability."

The Briton reckons Formula One's first night race will be a big challenge, especially for all team members, who will have to work on European times.

"I think it will have an impact on us and perhaps the biggest challenge will be managing the human performance of the team," Symonds added. "We've been working with our medical guys to make sure we are all prepared for it because travelling to the Far East is always quite hard and taxing on our bodies.

"The fact that we will be more or less operating on a European time zone will add a further dimension and confuse our body clocks even more. It's not something I'm worried about, but we need to keep it in mind as we're well aware that it's asking a lot of our mechanics and engineers.

"When we look back on Singapore, I think we will be talking mainly about how we coped with the logistical challenge."