Symonds: Ferrari are looking strong

Renault boss Flavio Briatore and Fernando Alonso both claimed after Michael Schumacher's victory in the San Marino Grand Prix that their biggest worry for the title remains McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen - because they felt Ferrari's Imola performance was likely just a one-off.

But after Schumacher outpaced Alonso at the Nurburgring last weekend, Symonds now believes that Ferrari cannot be discounted anywhere - even though the form between tyre suppliers Michelin and Bridgestone may still vary from race to race.

"It's hard to say at the moment," Symonds told autosport.com about where Renault and Ferrari stand in terms of competitiveness.

"Imola was interesting. I thought maybe Ferrari were being flattered a bit by Bridgestone there, and ultimately we had the quicker car even though we lost the race.

"Here (at the Nurburgring), they were very competitive... I'm sure it will switch race to race. But I think they are looking pretty strong."

Symonds says that Renault just have to accept that they were beaten by a quicker Ferrari last weekend - which was contributed in part by Bridgestone doing a better job than he had expected.

"It was the package," added Symonds. "It is always difficult to separate it out. But there is no doubt the Bridgestones worked better than I anticipated they would because they didn't just have the first lap performance, the (lack of) degradation was great.

"Ferrari were really quick and just out-performed us. That race to the second pit stop, we were giving it everything we got and Michael could respond in any way he wanted. They were definitely quicker than us."