By role
April 3 2003

Mike Gascoyne has revealed in a recent interview that Renault F1 team could perform even better than they did at Malaysia. The team is quite optimistic about their chances this weekend. With such high confidence it may seem unlikely to bet against them. In a recent interview in F1-Live.com Renaults F1 Technical Director said that the strong form is due to the overall competitiveness of the car:

"In Melbourne, we should have qualified better and the pace car hurt us, so it was pleasing to perform to our full potential in Malaysia. Without Jarno incident and Fernando's gearbox problem, I am confident that our level of competitiveness could have brought an even stronger result."

Alonso was able to hold Rubens on the fight for second place until his last pit stop and the problems the gearbox started to appear. Is also worth to mention that Alonso raced with high fever in extreme hot weather conditions and this could have also shown on his pace after the first pit stop.

Will Renault keep the same speed at Interlagos? Gascoyne thinks so:

"Once again, Brazil is a handling circuit like in Malaysia, where we run mid-range wing levels, and the team has traditionally performed very well there. Equally, we will be using similar tyres to those we saw in Malaysia, where Michelin were extremely competitive. All in all, I would expect us to be at least as competitive as we were in Malaysia, if not more so."

He is arguing against those who mention that Renault will be hampered by their decission to limit between-race testing in favour of testing 2 extra hours during the race:

"I am confident we can maintain our level of performance. We will be running three cars on Friday morning before the other teams and we are managing our test resources very carefully. In fact, we tested the tyre compounds for Interlagos on Friday morning at Sepang, in much higher, more representative temperatures than would be possible in Europe at this time of year. The data from that session should be a real advantage in Brazil."

Less than 24 hours away of the start of the Brazilian GP weekend everybody is ready to see if Renault can maintain the 2nd place of the Constructor's Championship that now they share with Ferrari.