Piquet laments difficult baptism

Piquet revealed that he has been playing catch-up for most of the weekend after his spin in first practice caused damage to the gearbox and forced the Renault team to make a lengthy change.

But notwithstanding his problems on track, the Brazilian said he has been surprised at the pace of a race weekend.

"It's really tough," said Piquet. "It is really difficult to set the car up for qualifying and the race, and consider all the strategy. Everything happens quickly during weekends.

"You don't have much time to think about things, they just happen really quickly. It's my first weekend and I'm still getting used to everything but learning-wise it has been very good."

Asked how he would compare his Renault debut to that of Heikki Kovalainen, who also had a tough time in his first race 12 months ago, Piquet responded: "I think it is a bit different in my case than Heikki's.

"He tested for more than 30,000kms, whereas I tested for about 10,000 from the first day I heard I was driving for Renault.

"I had much less running than Heikki, but even so there is not really a way to prepare rookies for a race," he added.

"Formula One weekends are always really difficult and really critical, but a GP2 weekend can be even harder because there is less time, the track changes much more and the evolution of a track is much more from practice to qualifying.

"It's about getting used to it. If you get everything right at the weekend things can work out, this is just not the right weekend and it wasn't for Heikki last year."

Piquet also said that while teammate Fernando Alonso's poor pace in qualifying took some of the pressure of his own performances, he was concerned that Renault was as far back as it is on the grid.

"If he was a bit quicker it would be better because it would mean that we have a quicker car," said Piquet. "But I think it proves that we are going to have a very, very tough year and we are going to be fighting a lot with four or five teams in the middle of the pack."