Briatore says Renault not panicking

The French squad, winners of both titles for the past two years, have scored just nine points in the first three races of 2007 as they have struggled to be competitive against the likes of Ferrari or McLaren.

But despite their problems to fight close to the top of the field, Briatore says the team are not panicking, and instead are working flat-out to rectify the situation.

"To have a crisis meeting you first need a crisis, and we don't have one," Briatore told the official Formula One website. "There is a gap in our performance compared to the top teams, and we need to make that up.

"We will do it by working hard and trusting in our engineers to find the solutions, not by panicking.

"We have plans for our development and for solving the problems, and we will follow them. As always, we have to balance that against designing and developing next year's car, and perhaps we will find some concepts that are relevant for this year.

"But finding the right compromise is always one of the challenges in F1, and we have not given up on 2007."

The team were left without world champion Fernando Alonso for this season, the Spaniard having moved to rivals McLaren, but Briatore says their current line-up of Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen has nothing to do with their problems.

"A car's speed is dictated in the wind tunnel and design office, not by a driver's feedback," he added. "We have the tools we need to analyse the problems and get back to the front, and we are using them.

"Fisico and Heikki are both in agreement on what the car needs, and now we need to provide it. There is nothing lacking from our drivers."