Formula One news

Alonso gives Renault hope

It was a mixed afternoon for the Renault as Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet qualified in 7th and 17th places respectively for tomorrow's Monaco Grand Prix.

"In Monaco qualifying is more important than anywhere else and our goal today was to make it through to Q3," said Alonso. "It is very difficult to overtake, but I think it is quite an open race and as we are not fighting for the championship we can approach this race aggressively and take a few risks. It will be a competitive race, that is for sure, but we just have to wait and see what the weather does."

Nelson Piquet commented, "I am very disappointed. I had a small problem with the brakes in Q1 and I was not on the pace. The car was very sensitive, but we saw with Fernando that it improved gradually throughout the session, which is all the more frustrating for me. A race from the back of the grid is always difficult, especially in Monaco, but I will give my maximum tomorrow, although my only real chance is to hope for rain, which will mix things up."

Engineering chief Pat Symonds added, "It's not been an easy day with the weather this morning giving us very little time to finish the work that we had to do. Consequently, we weren't even sure going into qualifying which would be the best tyre for the session. Nelson has suffered from the lack of running, but Fernando has done a superb job once again and his position on the grid is a credit to him and I think we can have a strong race tomorrow. Now we have to wait and see what the weather brings."

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