Formula One news

Dissapointing Renault hope for good strategy

Renault had high hopes for Fernando Alonso in qualifying, but bad luck and the inexperience of Toro Rosso's Buemi and young Frenchman Romain Grosjean, has resulted in the outfit being placed 12th and 18th on the grid for Sunday's Grand Prix.

Grosjean who qualified eighteenth has pinpointed the rainy second session of Friday as the main cause of his lack of pace, "With the rain Friday, we only had an hour of dry practice to get ready for the qualifying session. As a result, I haven't been able to do much running on a track that I haven't seen before."

Bob Bell, the recently promoted Team Principal understood the difficulties of Grosjean adapting to a new track but expected more from Alonso. "It was a disappointing session. We were pretty optimistic about getting Alonso into Q3, but the situation with Buemi's accident and the yellow flags meant that he had to back off and he missed out."

Grosjean has optimism for Sunday's race, and faith in his engineers, "We will see what strategy we can adapt tomorrow, to give the best chance of a good race." 

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