Formula One news

Two more races to see true order - Symonds

Fernando Alonso may have brought his Renault home in a stronger than expected fourth place at the Australian Grand Prix, but his engineering chief Pat Symonds believes that it will be another couple of races before we can see the true order of the teams this season.

"I don't think we can do that at the moment as we haven't had a clean race," Symonds said when asked what the order was. "We've had a race that has been interrupted by safety car periods and with people having abnormal problems."

"I never like to make predictions based on a sample of one and I think that it is the wrong thing to do," he added. "We usually find that after three races you start to get a picture of where you stand. I think that after Malaysia we will know a great deal more and after Bahrain we will have an even clearer picture."

Looking back at the opening round of the season Symonds added, "It's always nice to get the first one under your belt and to see how things stand. So often after the first race in Melbourne we are still asking ourselves questions, and I think that's the case again this year. There have been teams that have not been able to show their full potential, such as Ferrari, and we also had a slightly frustrating weekend but a good result at the end of it."

"Luck comes and goes and Fernando was quite unlucky with the safety car, but obviously towards the end of the race we picked up some luck. I think fourth place is a result that the whole team is quite happy with, but we're looking forward to getting onto a more classic type of circuit in Malaysia next weekend," he concluded.

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