Renault praises Kubica?s dedication
Date published : 06 Apr 2010 - 21:28:54
Renault's chief race engineer Alan Permane says the team has been hugely impressed with Robert Kubica's attitude and performance so far this year.Having stepped into double world champion Fernando Alonso's shoes following the Spaniard's move to Ferrari, Kubica appears to have effortlessly assumed the same team leadership role.
The Pole has already delivered a second place in Melbourne and a fourth in Malaysia, and is just nine points behind championship leader Felipe Massa after three rounds an outcome few would have predicted in the run-up to the season.Permane singled out Kubica's work ethic for particular praise. He simply hasn't put a foot wrong, he said.He got hit on the first lap in Bahrain but then battled back strongly to 11th place.He drove a perfect race in Melbourne under a lot of pressure and it was the same in Malaysia. Robert's very consistent, he's very fast and he's very hard working: we've been extremely impressed with the amount of time he spends with his engineers.He's a very, very good all-round driver.
Permane also gave credit to Kubica's rookie team-mate Vitaly Petrov, who was widely dismissed as a pay driver' but has impressed many in the paddock with his lightning starts and tenacious racing skills which he demonstrated in a wheel-to-wheel dice with Lewis Hamilton in Malaysia.We are learning that one of his great strengths is his ability to make up positions at the start and on the first lap, said Permane.He was very good again on Sunday and gained a couple of places.I think he caught Lewis by surprise by ducking back in front under braking for the first corner.It was encouraging to see Vitaly fighting hard for his position and not giving up.It was a real shame that his race was brought to an end by a technical problem with the gearbox.Permane admits the rain in Melbourne and Sepang qualifying played into Renault's hands and has somewhat flattered its car's performance, but is pleased with the R30's performance nonetheless.In terms of its strengths, the car is kind on its tyres, he observed.
Last year, we struggled with rear wear in particular, but the R30 is far better balanced in terms of tyre wear and that's a good bonus with no refuelling.As for weaknesses, we know that we need to improve our overall downforce. We've put updates on the car at every race this year and there's more coming.He is confident the team will steadily address the car's downforce deficit.We have a very good wind tunnel, which was upgraded over the winter; we've done good correlation work between the tunnel and the track; and we trust what the tunnel tells us, he said.
Our aero department is performing better than ever and they're finding very good gains at the moment.Downforce levels are increasing almost on a daily basis and we should have another good step forward in China.Renault reckons the R30 currently works better in warmer temperatures, and for this reason Permane is slightly concerned that the team's form may slip a little at the next race in China.Shanghai will be the opposite of Sepang in terms of temperatures it's something like 13 or 14 degrees Celsius over there yet we'll be running the same tyre compounds as we did in Malaysia, he noted.The challenge will be to get the hard compound working, especially because the long straight means that you can't simply add downforce to get the tyres working because it costs you too much straightline speed.In Melbourne, we had a suspicion that the car wasn't quite as competitive in cold conditions, so we'll be working hard to avoid a similar problem in Shanghai.
