Reliability, a constant challenge - Lainé

The Viry-Châtillon deputy managing director, André Lainé, gives his impressions of the French Grand Prix. Giancarlo Fisichella finished Renault's home Grand Prix in 6th position while team mate Heikki Kovalainen's race was ruined as he was hit by Jarno Trulli in the first lap of the race.

"Yesterday, we were very satisfied with our good qualifying performance. Of course, one of the BMWs had managed to sneak in ahead of us but we reckoned we’d do pretty well in the race. And what’s more, this performance underlines all the work we’ve done to find out and solve our problems. In the end the race did not fulfil its promise. Heikki couldn’t defend his corner and Giancarlo ran into problems on his longest stint, the second one. The car had a very heavy fuel load and the tyres started graining."

"Yes. However, we’re really very close to this team. The gap is tiny and the smallest error decides who will finish in front. We’re still lacking that little something in terms of pure performance to get ahead for once and for all, but it won’t be long now!"

"Rather well even if maintaining reliability is a constant challenge. We had a problem with Heikki’s V8 in Canada and we found out what it was, a defective part in fact, but in rather special operations conditions. Im summary, the engine wasn’t hot enough. We immediately launched programmes aimed at rectifying this error and we shouldn’t run into similar problems again. Today, we also decided to conserve Heikki’s engine in the latter stages: it would have been a waste of time using its full potential knowing that a points finish was out of the question."