Both Renault team boss, Flavio Briatore, and Renault s director of engineering, Pat Symonds, have belief in Nelson Piquet s abilities.
A poor start to the season has seen rumours surface that the youngster only has several races left in which to improve. Should his form not improve, many believe that he may lose his race-seat, possibly to Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson.
However, Briatore has publicly backed the youngster. “Nelsinho definitely has talent,†he said. “He is part of the team and we need him. I have no doubts about that.â€
Symonds thinks that Piquet needs more self-confidence to make the improvements that are required of him and believes that it is possible for Piquet to turn his season around. Symonds points to Heikki Kovalainen s rookie year last season when he had a poor start to the season before transforming his pace at Canada.
“It has been difficult for him but he has put in some good races,” Symonds said in Renault’s official podcast. “This time last year, a lot of people were thinking Heikki was entering his last few races, and Canada was just an incredible weekend for him because on Saturday could things really have gone worse?
“He had two major accidents, one of them in qualifying, and it is still a miracle to me we got the car out in qualifying to get anywhere. A fabulous race on Sunday in Canada and he never looked back.
“I’ve said it so often before how much with a driver or sportsman is about self esteem and believing in yourself and all Nelson needs to do is turn that corner and believe in himself and it will happen again.”
