Renault: We can beat Toyota to fourth

Symonds claims that, Hungary aside, where Toyota outscored Renault by 10 points to eight in a race where both team's drivers scored, the French manufacturer is showing an upward performance trend that his seen it significantly reduce the gap through the summer.

"We saw that BMW had a poor weekend and Toyota had a good weekend, but I don't believe the pecking order suddenly changes," said Symonds of the current status quo among the teams behind Ferrari and McLaren. "There are certainly trends, and at the moment we have a very distinct upward trend, whereas BMW have a little bit of a downward trend and Toyota seem to fluctuate.

"So I don't think that the race itself shows a change to the status quo, but merely reinforces the trends which have been developing for a little while."

Symonds added that he believed the team's R28 has improved over the summer and that Hungary was evidence of the team's ability to score consistent points.

"I think it was probably our strongest result of the season," he said. "While Nelson [Piquet]'s finishing position in Germany was a better result on paper, we were the first to acknowledge that luck played a major part in that result.

"In Hungary things were very different as we had two cars racing competitively all the way, racing against strong competitors and racing them on equal terms. From the moment we arrived there the car was competitive: we qualified well, we raced well and had to use strategy to get our result. The points were very welcome and in the last two races only McLaren have scored more points than us.

"The performance in Hungary reinforces the belief that we are moving in the right direction," he added, "and gives me confidence that we can finish fourth in the championship and end the season with the third fastest car."