Alonso says Renault looks competitive

Fernando Alonso admitted he took particular encouragement from the consistency of Renault’s performance in Valencia practice after ending the opening day of his home grand prix conclusively top of the times.

After opening the European Grand Prix weekend with the ninth fastest effort, the Spaniard was a factor at the top throughout the afternoon session before uncorking a late lap of which secured the fastest time by a massive 0.774s from Brawn.

While it previously has not been unknown for Renault to complete low-fuel laps in either practice or qualifying to gain a flattering position – Alonso having claimed pole at the last round in Hungary with a light car – its star driver says his quickest lap here didn’t come out of the blue.

“It is not only the last lap that we were quick,” he told reporters.


“Sometimes you drop fuel at the end or whatever and put a nice lap at the end, but this afternoon was a little bit better than that.

“We were always in the top three, top two, in any condition, with any tyre, any fuel load, with the prime or the super-soft.

“This was the best thing for us of this afternoon, the car seems competitive in all the parts and all the conditions we put the car.

“This is good news for us, but it’s only Friday so we need to keep working.”

After admitting to reporters on Thursday that he was unsure how suited the improving R29 would be to the stop-start nature of the street circuit, Alonso said it appeared all teams seemed to be having problems on the low-grip surface.

However, while acknowledging it is less of an issue than he feared, he says improvements still need to be made to the car coming into and out of corners.

“We need to keep working in the braking stability and the traction which are maybe the two problems we are facing at the moment in this grand prix,” Alonso said.

“It seems like it is the same for everybody, it is the track characteristics and low grip in these long braking [areas] and it is the same for everybody.

“So at the moment we seem okay on that, we need to keep improving obviously but we are more happy than we were yesterday maybe.”

While Renault’s recent upgrades appear to have improved the team’s competitiveness, Alonso concedes it is still not fast enough to challenge for wins outright and will probably again need to rely on lucky circumstances if it is to repeat its late-season wins from last year.

"It is a difficult question – I think we need some help from the others," he said when asked whether he thought he could claim a victory in the final seven races.

"It is the same as last year, in Singapore it was help from the safety car and a lucky moment and I took the benefit.

"And then in Fuji, at the start, the first four cars they were off the track in turn one, so without those things maybe I could not win any races last year.

"This year is more or less the same. We still need a couple of tenths to be able to win a grand prix, maybe three or four tenths to be competitive enough to win, but we are just behind that first group.

"So if they do any mistakes then maybe we can take the opportunity, but it will not depend only on us."

Source: ITV