Back on top - Rod Nelson
Fernando Alonso’s race engineer, Rod Nelson, takes us through a dramatic qualifying session. Fernando Alonso will start tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix from pole position with team mate Giancarlo Fisichelle next to him.
"Just a little! These conditions mean there is no time to relax at all, and you have to be watching dozens of things at the same time. But we didn’t make any mistakes, and put in the times when it counted."
If qualifying had been run in the dry, would the result have been the same?"Ferrari would have been more competitive, of course, but we would have been fighting with them. Monza showed us that we had the speed to fight at the front again, and we know think we can compete against Ferrari on equal terms. It’s no exaggeration that Renault has bounced back."
Have the difficult track conditions this weekend prevented you from finding the right set-up on the car?"No not really. The tyres are working well, the balance was good straight away yesterday and we only made minor changes. We knew the car would be quick at this circuit."
Did you make your tyre choice for dry conditions?"The rules say that we have to use the type of tyre we qualified on, in the race. Given that we qualified on rain tyres, that means that if the track is dry tomorrow, we will be able to take our decision when we go to the grid."
Source Renaultf1
