Formula One news

Renault on course for strong first race - Bell

Renault technical director Bob Bell claims his team is on course to put in a strong performance for the first round of the new season at the Australian Grand Prix at the end of March.

"It's still very early days, but I'm becoming increasingly more satisfied with the performance of the car," Bell said. "Obviously the Portimao test was a disappointment to us as we only had one dry day and although the car ran well from a reliability point of view, we still had lots of unanswered performance-related questions."

"It's true that we didn't look great at that first test, but that was not really a surprise to us as we simply got the car out with an interim set of bodywork so that we could get miles on it, evaluate reliability and get the KERS system up and running," he added. "So we didn't really expect to be that competitive, especially as we were learning about the set-up that is needed for this new generation of cars. Since then we've put a lot of things right at the Jerez test and I think we've made good progress. Overall I'm encouraged by what we've seen so far."

Bell's words come amid mounting rumours that there was a more significant problem with the new car's aerodynamics than they let on. The team has also been spotted on several days testing in private at an airfield in the UK - a kind of testing teams only tend to do in order to work specifically on aerodynamic issues. 

"What matters is performance relative to other teams and at the moment it's very difficult to judge because everybody is running different programmes, interim bodywork and different fuel loads," he added. "I think things will become clearer when we approach the final winter test, but for now it's too hard to judge. However, from what we've seen in Jerez this week, I don't feel there are any fundamental problems with the car: it's well balanced and is responding well to changes. We're lacking a bit of grip, which is the same for everybody, but that will improve as we fit new parts to the car and continue our development up to the first race. Overall I feel we're on course to deliver a good performance in Melbourne."

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