The Enstone Technical Director is confident Renault has the ability to close the gap to Ferrari… starting with this weekend’s race in Malaysia.

Indications from Melbourne suggest reliability among the top teams will be very strong this year. Given this, how much more important will it become to qualify well, particularly at circuits where overtaking is difficult?It will be crucial, and we certainly need to focus on our qualifying pace to bring it up to the level of our race speed. Firstly, we will look to setting the car up in such a way that it maintains the benefits of its pace on long runs while exploiting the first lap qualifying performance. Secondly, we will be able to do more with the engine to manage this gap later in the season as we get more power – we were slightly conservative from this perspective in Melbourne, and will be looking to push the envelope as the year goes on.

Last year, we saw the Renault was particularly strong on the brakes into the hairpins in Malaysia: is there any particular reason for this?The performance of the R24 is very good under braking. The car has very good grip and is extremely stable aerodynamically. When braking hard from over 300kph, a car undergoes dramatic changes in attitude, particularly during the initial phases, and it is important that the aerodynamics can handle this without undue disturbance. This was certainly the case last year, and there is no reason to think it would have changed on the R24.

After a solid start in Melbourne, how do you expect things to go in Malaysia?We were very heartened by our performance in Australia, and I think we have the potential for a good, solid result in Sepang. The circuit suits the strengths of our package and while Ferrari caught everybody out in Australia, I am sure we can close the gap at this race. A question mark remains over tyre performance, but we will have a clearer picture once we have run in the hotter conditions. In general, the level of confidence within the team is very high right now.