By role
August 28 2004

Italian driver Jarno Trulli showed today at Spa his pure speed on qualifying by setting the pole in the difficult conditions of today's qualifying. The Italian took advantage of better weather conditions and of a brave decissions to go with intermediate tyres to set his second pole of his career. His teammate Fernando Alonso also run on intermediates and finished with he 3rd best time just behind the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher.

Renault therefore is in a great position to finish on the podium tomorrow and they will try to maintain the cometitiveness through the race.

"This afternoon, we took a gamble and it paid off. We were watching the cars that went out before me in qualifying very closely to judge whether we could use the intermediate tyres or not. I thought it could work, particularly in the second and third sectors, so we took the risk, and the team did a great job to react so quickly. On the lap itself, everything went smoothly: the handling of the R24 was good, and I would even say I could have gone slightly quicker. It has been tough for me in recent races, so I hope that I will be able to turn this pole position into a strong result tomorrow." Said Trulli.

Last time Trulli was on ple he won the race so for tomorrow nthe Italian will be looking forward to repeat his performance of some months ago.

Fernando Alonso was also quite happy with his result after a tough day:

"I think that overall, I was lucky today: after I had done the first half of my timed lap, it started raining again, but fortunately it was not heavy and I didn't lose too much time. In fact, it was the first time this weekend that I had run on intermediate tyres, which meant I didn't have long to adapt to them, and it was quite difficult to find the limit. However, we had a very good day yesterday and I am optimistic that the car will be very quick in the dry." Alonso said.

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering, was quite sattisfied with the result:

"This is a fantastic result for the entire team. I have always said that I don't believe in luck, but we were certainly lucky today. Having said that, you must be able to seize opportunities when they come along and we did that by choosing to run on intermediates at the very last moment. Equally, Michelin supplied us with tyres that were perfectly suited to the conditions. I am very pleased to see Jarno take his second pole position, and we are confident that we can make good use of our grid positions in tomorrow's race." He added.