Renault remain bullish on titles chances

The French squad lost a perfect opportunity to leave Shanghai with a win, with Fernando Alonso having started from pole position and having dominated the opening part of the race.

Tyre problems, however, meant Alonso lost a 20-second advantage to championship rival Michael Schumacher, who bounced back from a poor qualifying to take victory and equalled the Spaniard on points with just two races to go.

There was encouragement for Renault as Alonso seemed to be the fastest man both in the dry and in the wet, and the world champions regained the lead of the constructors' championship thanks to Giancarlo Fisichella's third place.

And although there was a big sense of disappointment at Renault following the missed opportunity, the team's chief of engineering Pat Symonds is upbeat about the French squad's chances for the remaining two races of the season.

"I really feel that we let ourselves down," said Symonds of the Chinese race. "In these circumstances it is not a question of hanging anyone, it just happened. But as I said earlier, the great thing to see is that we are right back on the pace and we can beat them.

"I think the car will be fabulous at Suzuka. It was so good at the British Grand Prix (which has similar car demands) and we were back testing at Silverstone, doing Suzuka tyres, a couple of weeks ago and it was lovely. If the car is good at Silverstone then it will be good at Suzuka.

"We feel very good about Suzuka and we have had some pretty nice races at Brazil in the last few years. So it is another circuit where I feel we will be quite good.

"I am not going to say that we are going there and it is going to be easy, because they are going to hard fights, but they are also going to be good fights. If anything, it is a minute amount, but I feel that we might just have the upper hand in terms of raw performance.

"In the dry in the race I think we had it. Michael obviously wasn't pushing all the time, but he was pushing enough for us to see where things were."