Renault duo thrilled by team's recovery

A faulty batch of material led to breakages on both cars yesterday morning, and then saw the team sit out much of the rest of the day while the cause was identified and the parts replaced.

But once on track, the Renaults have been competitive, and today Heidfeld qualified sixth and Petrov eighth.

"I'm very satisfied as I think it's the maximum we could have achieved, especially looking back at Friday where we didn't do many laps at all and didn't have a lot of time to set up the car," said Heidfeld.

The German was particularly pleased with his Q3 effort.

"It got faster and faster in qualifying today, but I have to say in Q1 I took it easy then I pushed a bit over the limit in Q2 and lost some time there, but in Q3 I found the golden middle and it was a good lap," he said. "Of course, I was a lot happier with the traffic here than I was in Australia."

Petrov said he had been more satisfied with the car than he expected given how behind Renault should have been after Friday.

"To get in the top 10 today is a good result considering the track time we lost yesterday," he said. "We worked hard on improving the set-up in final practice and in the end I had quite a good feeling with the car."