Jarno Trulli Column

For a long time I haven't enjoyed the Imola weekend, but this year it was definitely a positive one for me. It will be a shame if it's the last race there, especially as I'm an Italian, and it's always good to race at home. But it will be difficult for them to keep it.

To be honest I was very happy to finish fifth. I had a lot of troubles, and because of that, I was pleased to get some points at the end of the race. I had a problem with the engine, and also there was a problem with the tyres, the brakes and the HANS device as well! So I couldn't expect better.

We had more fuel than some of the others in qualifying, but that's not an excuse. We just didn't have the pace. In the previous races our strategy affected the result a lot, so we tried to do something different this time.

You might have seen a big cloud of smoke from my car at the start! They're still investigating the engine, but obviously something was wrong. There was no power, and the engine just didn't accelerate. For the whole race I was struggling a lot. Every time I came out of the pits just from the pit limiter coming on to the first corner I was losing nearly a second to Fernando, and that's just a few hundred metres. When I was actually running, it was a little inconsistent. Sometimes it was good, sometimes not.

Anyway, stopping later got me up to fourth. I was pulling away most of the time, but by mid-race and to the end I was struggling, so the others were catching me up step by step. I had to push hard to try to keep the gap. Actually I did very well, and even after the second pit stop I came out ahead of Ralf. But because of the problem I had on the engine he got past me easily on the straight, because my engine wasn't accelerating. Otherwise I would have kept all three of them behind me - Ralf [Schumacher], Rubens [Barrichello] and Fernando [Alonso].

I should have gone longer before the last stint, but because I was having problems they wanted Fernando to go ahead. They stopped me earlier and Fernando later, but actually I had more fuel than him. They planned to do that because they knew I was slow and I was having problems, although they didn't tell me. But in the end it was the obvious thing to do, because I was so slow, and really struggling to hold Barrichello behind me.

Again we had good reliability, and we finished with both cars, and it was great because we scored some good points with the championship. If I compare this year's bad luck with last year's bad luck, it's definitely changed a lot! So I'm happy with the way it's going now, even if I've got some troubles. I've been unlucky with some circumstances, especially in traffic. In Bahrain I lost a podium just because I had traffic, nothing else. It's just something you have to accept. Anyway, I've got the points, I'm fifth in the championship, and I'm still there and still fighting.

I think Renault is still growing up, but this year the team that's made the biggest improvement is BAR, it's so clear. They're always ahead of us with both cars. I think it will be a tough season in general, and we'll have to give our best to keep people like McLaren behind us.

So far we've seen that we have to live grand prix by grand prix. We think Barcelona should be better for us than any other race so far, but then we expected good results in Malaysia, which didn't happen. So I'm careful. We know that it is going to be a tough weekend and we have to make the most of it.

I hope to go further than last year, when I had the crash with Coulthard! We knew that the car was very quick, very competitive. When you lose this sort of opportunity, it really pisses you off. You get out of the car and want to hit something...