Pat Symonds Q&A
Renault continued to pile up the points in Monaco as Fernando Alonso and Jarno Trulli finished fifth and sixth. That wasn't too bad, considering they both finished ahead of a McLaren and a Ferrari, but nevertheless it was perhaps a little less than the team was hoping for. Next stop is Canada, where over the years Renault-powered Benettons have performed very respectably. The lack of bhp provided by the current model may leave the blue and yellow cars a little breathless, however. Adam Cooper spoke to Renault engineering boss Pat Symonds
"Yeah, we did. I guess the points were spread out reasonably evenly, nevertheless I'm disappointed, as I felt we were going to be more competitive than that. We had no particular problems, but we just seemed to drop away from the leaders. I think we just need to work on the total performance on this type of circuit."
"I don't know really know where we were losing out, but that's what we've got to look at. Two cars in the points, we shouldn't be massively disappointed, but we always hope for more."
"That's exactly why I felt we were competitive. We knew that we had qualified with a good fuel load. We weren't far out in our estimates of other people's fuel loads. It should have brought a better result, but it didn't."
"I think in actual fact Fernando did put on a good performance. He moved up from eighth to fifth, and that was not through retirements, so he had the pace. Jarno unfortunately went from fourth to sixth. We seemed to be gradually falling behind a little bit."
"It's not terribly fundamental, but there used to be a lot of accidents at the entry to Rascasse, and they've gone. That's got to be a good thing. Overall it's quite good, with quite sensible kerbing. It's a small improvement to the track - nothing major, but better rather than worse."
"Canada has good and bad points for us. On the plus side it's a circuit where you need good traction, you need good braking, you need good low speed performance. On those things I think the car will be very competitive. On the bad side you need a lot of acceleration. But if we're down a bit on top speed we can pull wing off the car without losing too much lap time. It's what I would call an average circuit for our car at the moment. It's not going to be a disaster, it's not going to be a great race."
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments