Malaysia Saturday quotes: Renault

"From a personal point of view, though, this was a much better qualifying session for me compared to Melbourne. I think our race will be with Williams, Toyota and Red Bull tomorrow - and I am optimistic that I can do a good job."

Giancarlo Fisichella - 12th: "The car has been tricky to drive all weekend: the balance is not too bad, but we are lacking grip, and that makes the handling quite unpredictable, which means it is hard to put a clean lap together. Just like in Melbourne, we are a long way from the leaders, and we know that we need to improve.

"Looking to tomorrow, it will be a tough race, as always - and we are starting quite far back. We need to make the right calls on strategy, and see how things unfold."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: "We felt we had made progress before this race but of course, the notion of competitiveness is always relative - and it is now clear that some of our rivals have made more progress on this circuit. Having said that, it is equally true to say that we didn't maximise our chances today.

"Clearly the overall level of performance is disappointing, but we now have to knuckle down and make the most of the situation we find ourselves in. We will look to take full advantage of our freedom to choose the fuel load for both cars, and race hard through the midfield pack tomorrow."

Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations: "From the team's point of view, the first thing we look for is equality of performance between the two drivers and, unlike in Melbourne, we clearly have that today. The midfield battle is exceptionally close, but we are not at the front of that group, and that makes life much more difficult.

"Starting from the second half of the field means we cannot realistically hope for a strong result, but we must nevertheless race well, and make the most of our opportunities.

"On the engine side, we were disappointed to suffer a recurrence of our fuel pump problems on Heikki's race chassis this morning, but qualifying ran smoothly - and we hope to see this continue throughout the Grand Prix. "