Renault Qualifying Round Up

Vitaly Petrov (8th)“I was pleased with today’s efforts. Eighth position is something to be proud of, and it gives me a strong chance to make my presence known towards the top end of the grid tomorrow. I was quite surprised with how enthusiastic we were in venturing out again in Q3, but I was unable to complete a second timed lap anyway. This track is quite smooth, and today it offered a lot of grip with these tyres. As a team we did a fantastic job, and the main thing is we have no mechanical problems heading into tomorrow.”

Bruno Senna (15th)“It’s been a bit of a tough weekend so far and today didn’t go quite to plan. It’s my first poor qualifying performance of the year and I hope it’s the last! These things happen – sometimes you just don’t get everything you need out of the car at the vital time. Vitaly did a great job so we’ve seen that the car is consistent and has strong potential for the race. The car was fine; I probably didn’t have sufficient mileage to push when it mattered on my qualifying run. I’m just off Vitaly’s time in a few corners and that’s all it takes to make the difference between Q2 and Q3. It’s not the ideal way to celebrate my birthday, but tomorrow should be a better day.”

Alan Permane, Renault chief race engineer“We will have a look at why Bruno was lacking in pace, but Vitaly pulled a strong result out of the bag. He completed an excellent lap in Q2 on scrub tyres to ensure he secured his place in Q3, so it is all looking quite promising for tomorrow. I’m sure we can have a good battle with the other teams to ensure we score some good points. The tyres are actually behaving pretty well. As expected, the super soft was quicker than the soft but the durability of the super soft looked particularly good. Certainly on the light fuel loads we were running today the degradation was almost non-existent; we were able to go out on scrubbed tyres and obtain almost the same lap times that we could on new tyres. This will be somewhat different in the race with the full tanks, but we do not expect it to pose huge problems. It will be a challenge to arrive upon the right strategy, but the tyres certainly look durable enough to race here.”


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