Lotus Renault GP driver Vitaly Petrov positive after major upgrades – Formula 1 news
Lotus Renault GP’s Vitaly Petrov has recently stated that he is positive after some major upgrades were applied to his car as he was able to finish in 9th place at this past weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix and now the car
is performing much better.
“Our strategy was good, however we lost out on our top speed which meant I found it very difficult to overtake. The car was very strong on the corners, and we were very good on the brakes until I had issues at the end,” he said.
However, the team was unable to finish ahead of its rivals Mercedes GP as Michael Schumacher scored the 5th place while his teammate Nico Rosberg finished in 6th place to give a double point finish.
Unfortunately for Renault, Bruno Senna was unable to secure a single point in his debut race for the team and it seems that the team will have to get rid of its issues before heading on for the upcoming races as they replaced Nick Heidfeld for the Belgian
Grand Prix and the result was not satisfactory.
Petrov on the other hand has been performing pretty well and the team is satisfied with his performance as well. He was in 8th place near the end of the race but lost his place to Felipe Massa mainly because of a “braking
problem” he claims.
“For the final laps I was driving differently to compensate for the brake concerns, but unfortunately I spun right at the end as I had totally lost my front brakes. Looking at the performance of the weekend, overall I'm quite happy,” said the Russian driver.
Nevertheless, Renault are now in 5th place in the constructors’ standings and it seems that they might not be able to chase Mercedes GP this year as they are much faster comparatively.
With just 7 races remaining, Renault would have to take a lot of risks in order to make some major improvements and try some new things with their innovative R31 which at first was performing outstandingly during the first couple of races of the season.
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