Symonds keen to do more in F1

The former Renault engineering chief has been out of F1 since being at the centre of the race-fixing saga surrounding the team at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

While, as part of an agreement he made with the FIA following those events, he cannot return full-time to F1 until the start of 2013, he is allowed to do consultancy work for teams through his Neutrino Dynamics company.

And speaking on stage at AUTOSPORT International on Sunday, Symonds said that he was eager to do more in F1 in the future.

"I hope so," he said. "There are still lots of things I want to do. I am working as a consultant now and I am doing a lot of work in racing as well as in other areas. I still have a love of F1 because of the engineering. I absolutely have a passion for racing - you cannot keep me away."

Symonds has kept close links to the sport over the past 18 months - and is currently enjoying his role as a technical writer for AUTOSPORT's sister publication F1 Racing.

Talking about how much he has enjoyed his foray into journalism, Symonds said: "It is certainly not easy to try and get things across because technology is very much part of the DNA of Formula 1 and I think it is very, very important that people understand and appreciate it.

"There is absolutely no point in having beautiful engineering that you don't tell anybody about, and the people don't understand, so I am trying to broaden that horizon a little bit.

"There are a lot of things that go on in F1 that teams are so secretive about and they ought to be proud of them. For example the current F1 engine is actually very fuel efficient but people don't look at it that way. I want people to know about these things and therefore I want to try and explain it in ways that are easily understood."

He added: "We don't want gimmickry and nor do we want a highly complex and intellectual chess game. I think it should be: what you see is what you get, but at the same time there is a technical element. Not everyone is technically minded so I want to try and get those things across. But ultimately it has to be simple.

"Strategy used to be something I loved doing, but to be honest it was getting too complex. I think you really needed to be a mathematician to understand how things were going to pan out and that was not a great thing."