Q & A with Renault's Pat Symonds

Autosport.com heard from Pat Symonds about Renault's upturn in form and their prospects for 2009.

Q. Renault have now won two races in a row. How do the two victories compare?

Pat Symonds - Renault's director of engineering: This is much better because in Singapore, admittedly the car was quick but it needed a bit of luck as well. I don't think there was any luck involved in this one.

OK, there was a mess on the first lap which certainly helped us but at one point, on lap 63, Fernando just said, "I can go much quicker than this, don't worry." So he just had it in hand.

Q. You took the decision to fuel Alonso quite short for the second stint. What was your thinking?

PS: Our initial thought was that we'd go long, but then we decided to try and keep track position at that point. So we had to make sure we didn't go too long against him. Nelson's fight was much harder actually.

We changed his stop lap time and time again, and I think the final change to the fuel load came ten seconds before he actually stopped in the pit box. Then when I looked afterwards, I saw it was the same lap as we'd pre-prepared.

Q. You now appear to have the third fastest car in the field. Are you sorry this level of performance came so late in the season?

PS: I suppose so - and that we're not the fastest car in the field! Mid-season, I said that if we could finish fourth in the championship, with the third fastest car, then I'd feel that we'd achieved some objectives. I guess that's pretty well where we are now. Maybe it's better than third fastest, who knows.

Q. What is the gap to McLaren and Ferrari now?

PS: It's come down from 1.2% at the start of the season to about 0.5% now.

Q. Are you worried that having pushed to the end of the season on 2008, the team has compromised its development for 2009?

PS: I don't think so. We had a new front wing in Singapore but that's one of the longest lead-time items in production, so the design on that was done way, way long ago. We switched onto 2009 a little earlier than normal because of the amount of work to be done. I think we had 100% design commitment at about the same time, but we started the job a lot earlier than normal.

Q. Does a performance like this increase the chances of Alonso staying with the team?

PS: I hope so. We can't do much more, can we?