What Petrov must do to stay in F1

Vitaly Petrov has a challenge on his hands. The objectives are simple, focusing primarily on performance during a 15-minute window on Saturday afternoon.

Achieving them is more difficult, but despite some taking Renault team principal Eric Boullier's recent comments about the Russian needing to emerge as a regular points scorer as being tantamount to a statement of his certain axing, Petrov is still a contender for a 2011 drive. As Boullier puts it "his future is in his hands" and despite patchy results on paper there have been signs of the speed needed to make good.

The numbers that matter don't look great for Petrov. After 10 races, he has just six points compared to team-mate Robert Kubica's 83, which is an unimpressive 7.23 per cent of his team-mate's total. To put that into context, during his season-and-a-half at Renault in 2008/2009, Nelson Piquet returned just over 25 per cent of Fernando Alonso's points (although it should be noted that eight of his points came for a fluke second place at Hockenheim in 2008). Petrov has been outqualified by Kubica every race and has only twice made it into Q3. The question is, are those figures a fair reflection of Petrov's performance in 2010? Almost certainly not.

The first mitigating factor is the lack of testing. Petrov had fewer than 2000kms of testing under his belt when he headed to the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Much of that running was in wet conditions, and he hadn't had the chance even to work on qualifying simulations before his first weekend as a Formula 1 race driver. By contrast, his two predecessors as Renault's 'second' driver, Heikki Kovalainen and Piquet, had 92 and 47 official days under their belts. In the current climate, with pre-season testing limited to just 15 days per team, it's unrealistic to expect fully polished rookies to blaze onto the season in the style of Lewis Hamilton in 2007.

Yet, for all that, points-wise he is the best-placed of the five rookie drivers in 2010 and he has won over plenty of those who characterised him as a pay-driver because of the commercial opportunities that Renault has capitalised on in running him. It didn't take long for those within Renault to take to him, especially once he upped his game after struggling in Bahrain and started to look like potential top 10 material.

He's good enough to win races in GP2, where he was also ferociously committed and rapid in the wet, and there's no doubt that the ingredients are there.

Vitaly Petrov chats with Renault boss Eric Boullier © LAT

"The objectives are very simple," Boullier explains. "Vitaly has got a very good level of raw talent. We have not seen that in terms of results, but we see it in the team. Very often in free practice three or in Q1, he's very close to Robert. What is lacking now is bringing points home.

"What I have told him is to be more focused on his consistency. Rather than trying to match the pace of Robert, I prefer Vitaly to be a couple of tenths slower but in Q3 as he does not have so much experience. Then, starting from the top 10, you can expect him to score points.

"I have set quite a reasonable objective. I'm not asking him to match Robert, but if Robert is P1, you can't expect Vitaly to be out of the top six. He can be three or four tenths slower; that is the gap you can allow to a rookie but no more. What I am more concerned about is that I want him not to make any mistakes and do consistent, fast laps."

It's hard to argue with Boullier's position, or to suggest that he is putting any undue pressure on his charge. As for Petrov, he has good reason to be happy in a team that, rather than putting the word out that he's about to be dropped or suggesting that he is below par, has accepted that he needs more time and given him a realistic target. What's more, Genii Capital's Gerard Lopez, the majority shareholder in Renault, is on record as saying that he wants to make sure the Petrov stays in F1 even if Renault do opt to replace him.

"They don't put me under pressure," says Petrov. "They just want me to make less mistakes. They say what is good and what is bad and they help me.

"The key is qualifying. The race is important, but if I qualified well the race results would be better."

Petrov has often got stuck in the midfield after qualifying badly © LAT

And that means the quarter-of-an-hour Q2 session in the upcoming races will be critical for Petrov's future - particularly his performance in Germany and Hungary before the mid-season break. The speed has been there in flashes, in occasional laps and in impressive sectors, but all too often Q2 lets him down. There have been occasions when his practice performance has promised a top 10 grid slot - at Silverstone he appeared to be a strong Q3 contender - but he has struggled to find those extra few tenths that Kubica is able to come the crunch.

"It's just experience and understanding how quick you can go and how much you can attack when you have low fuel, good tyres and need to do just one quick lap," says Petrov. "It's one or two tenths - one of two tenths is nothing."

And yet it is everything for Petrov. Boullier believes that keeping it simple in qualifying will allow him to exploit his potential.

"He is still discovering F1," says Boullier of Petrov. "Everybody says that he has now got 10 races under his belt, but every track is different and he never drove an F1 car on these tracks before. Experience is very important if you are to find the limit and do good lap times without mistakes.

"You can't blame him, because he hasn't a lot of miles under his belt in testing and then he was pitched straight into a Formula 1 World Championship. You can't cost yourself a couple of tenths with a mistake in Q2 because you need to do the perfect lap. So far, when he has failed to get through to Q3 it's because of a lack of experience or too much pressure, which he should not have.

"He can do it. If you can do it in Q1, you can do it in Q2. He needs to get through Q2 and he can. It is the most complicated thing - to have the confidence to go in Q2 and do one lap to be at the limit without being over it. It's not easy for a rookie driver."

The two Renaults in Hockenheim practice © LAT

Having Kubica as a team-mate has made his task particularly challenging. Although Petrov himself doesn't let slip any frustration at having a gold standard driver on the other side of the garage, he must set aside ambitions of being him in the short term to avoid overdriving, which can be partly blamed for the mistakes he has made this year.

"It's good," he says of having Kubica as a team-mate. "I can see what he is doing and learn from him and the data. It's always good to have a strong team-mate. I've always had strong team-mates like Romain Grosjean and Giorgio Pantano in GP2. I learn from them, but I just need more time to understand."

Time is the crux of the issue. If he can qualify regularly in the top 10 - and right now the fifth row is plenty good enough - the points will follow. The Russian has shown beyond any doubt his readiness for a fight, scrapping with Lewis Hamilton in Malaysia and with Alonso in Turkey, and those few extra tenths in Q2 will allow him to show that. There have been no signs that Petrov is a superstar, but he clearly has the ingredients needed to establish himself as a decent grand prix driver. If he can do that, then, Boullier believes, is that time for Petrov to start comparing himself to Kubica.

"If he can do this, he can position himself as a very bankable driver in terms of delivering results. I've told him already that the next step after you consistently qualify in the top 10 and finish in the points is to modify the way you are working and to push more on the details. Then he can go step by step and improve his pace."

Rain in free practice at Hockenheim on Friday hasn't helped Petrov's cause, but that's grand prix racing. He knows what he has to do, he knows that he can do it... it's just a question of putting it all together.