Formula One news

Fisichella writes off Renault season

Gianarlo Fisichella has written off the Renault team's chances of successfully defending its F1 crowns after yet another weekend where the team could not come close to matching the leading pace and even struggled to get one driver into final qualifying.

"It's not good at all," Fisichella told Reuters after he qualified a lowly seventh and team mate Kovalainen is twelfth on the grid. "At the start of the year our goal was to fight for pole and win races and now we find ourselves just hoping to score some points."

"It can't get much worse than this," he added. "It will be a very tough first part of the season. I feel disappointed because at the start of the year I was confident of fighting for the championship but unfortunately that's not possible any more."

Officially Renault is trying to attribute the loss of pace to the switch to Bridgestone tyres, but internally rumours suggest team boss Flavio Briatore is growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of leadership or pace on the driver front following Fernando Alonso's departure.

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