Pat Symonds believes that a lack of grip prevented Renault from being stronger in qualifying. Fernando Alonso could only manage ninth in his Renault, despite topping the practice session earlier in the morning, whereas his team mate Nelson Piquet qualified twelfth.
Fernando Alonso – 9th: “Overall I’m happy with my performance as I did the best I could today. At the end of the session I was caught in a line of traffic, but honestly our ninth place reflects where our car is at the moment because I was 12th in Q1 and ninth in Q2. It’s clear that we still need to improve and find more speed.”
Nelson Piquet 12th: “I’m not totally happy because my ideal lap would have put me in the top ten. However, the car wasn’t perfect and I didn’t have the ideal brake balance which made it difficult to get the most from the car. However, if you had said to me before the weekend that we would have this result, I think I would have been relatively satisfied and starting 12th is not too bad. Now we need to concentrate on making the most of the strategy tomorrow.”
Pat Symonds Executive director of engineering: “A disappointing qualifying session for us. The car seemed well balanced this morning, but this afternoon it lacked that little bit of extra grip that we needed.”
