Stay confident - Kovalainen

The Finnish ING Renault F1 team driver, Heikki Kovalainen, is disappointed with today’s performance at Silverstone, but he knows that new parts are in the pipeline for the race at Nürbürgring. The team will test at Spa-Francorchamps this week.

"Rather well at the start. I passed Ralf Schumacher, and as Felipe Massa started from the pit lane I went through the first corner having moved up two places. Unfortunately, the performance began to fall off soon afterwards."

"While the car was pretty competitive on hard tyres its handling became very unstable, above all in the twisty sections at the end of the circuit. The rear tyres’ performance fell away. I stopped for the first time and put on the hard compound again. After a few laps the same problem reoccurred, so I lost time. Then I had the soft compound for the final laps of the race and things were okay again. But by then it was too late."

"No, he didn’t. It was the opposite for him! After the finish the team began to analyse the data to try and understand what happened."

"I’m rather disappointed like the rest of the team. We really wanted to put on a good show for Renault’s second home grand prix, and we didn’t finish where we expected. And what’s even more frustrating is that the two BMWs finished in front of us. So the team scored more points and we’re fighting with them for third place in the championship. But we did our very best. And we know that the factory’s working flat out to produce new technical evolutions for the coming races. We have to stay confident and say to ourselves that progress is just around the corner."