Get the maximum out of the car in qualifying - Petrov
The Renault Formula One Team is getting ready for the British Grand Prix at the revamped Silverstone Circuit. Rookie driver Vitaly Petrov believes it will be very important to get the maximum out of the car in qualifying to be able to get the most out of his race.
Vitaly, at the last race in Valencia you had a mixed weekend. What did you learn from it? "We had a lot of new upgrades to the car in Valencia and so the car felt very different and I had to adapt my driving style quite a bit. I was happy to get a good result in qualifying and make it into the top ten, but unfortunately I had no new tyres left for Q3 so I couldn’t improve on tenth place. In the race I didn’t want to risk too much at the start and I was lucky not to crash with the Force Indias, which were attacking hard. But the important thing is that I was able to finish the race, learn about the car, and get some more experience. Everybody knows how difficult it is to overtake in Valencia so I followed De la Rosa and was waiting for a mistake. He made one mistake in the race, but unfortunately I was not close enough to get by."
After nine races, how do you look back on the first half of the year? "It’s difficult to sum up my feelings because so much has happened to me in the last six months. I’m still learning about Formula 1 and I feel that I’m improving at each race and working better with the team and my engineers. I’ve seen just how competitive Formula 1 is and it still amazes me to see how much effort goes on by the team to improve the car at each race. For the rest of the season I know that I must work hard with Robert if we are to beat Mercedes before the end of the year, and this is our clear objective."
You’ve raced at Silverstone before in GP2, but the layout has changed for this year. Do you think the new arena section will add an extra challenge? "Until we get there and drive the lap it’s difficult to know what the new section will be like in an F1 car. My feeling is that it will just make the lap a bit longer because the main characteristics of the track have not changed. It was always difficult to overtake at the old Silverstone because of the quick corners and I think that will still be the case this year. There are some extra straights, but I don’t know if they are long enough to allow overtaking."
How will you approach the British Grand Prix? "The first thing we need to do is to see how our upgrades work at Silverstone because it’s a very different circuit to Valencia and much more high-speed. And because it’s difficult to overtake, I know how important it will be to get the maximum from the car in qualifying. So I must try and avoid any mistakes over the weekend and aim to qualify inside the top ten so that we can get the most from the race. It’s a local race for the Enstone factory so it would be extra special to get a good result for the team."
Source Renault
