The Executive Director of Engineering at the Renault Formula One team, Pat Symonds, was disappointed at the end of the European grand prix here yesterday afternoon after his two drivers, Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen endured an afternoon of missed opportunities. Heikki was the only one to finish in the points, and that was with an eight placed finish while Giancarlo finished outside the points in tenth overall.

Pat, it looked like a tough race today…
Absolutely, it was. We needed to react to a lot of things at very short notice. We knew that the first rain shower was coming, when it did. The more interesting situation was at the end, when we found ourselves in a bad situation with Heikki. There was more rain coming, and it coincided reasonably well with his final stop for fuel. At that stage, he had no opportunity to finish in the points, so we sent him out on the wet tyres hoping the rain would come. It was perhaps four minutes later than we would have liked, but it was worth a gamble.

You had new developments for this weekend’s race. How did they perform?
We were running a new front wing, and all our measurements indicated it was performing well, and giving the gain we expected. Our real problem this weekend was getting the tyres working properly. We never managed to do so properly, and our performances reflected that. It wasn’t a great weekend.

So what now?
Well, we have a test coming up this week. It will be an important one: this weekend, we seemed to have lost performance relative to the competition, and we need to get to the bottom of that. It is also the final opportunity we will have to run ahead of the summer break, so we need to make we have three trouble-free days – and that we make good progress with our development programme.

What’s the mood in the team as you head home this evening?
Pretty downcast to be honest, but that is to be expected after a day of missed opportunities. The team has proven its character already this year, and we will have to do so again in the coming weeks. The factory is working fantastically hard to provide us with the new parts we need to improve the car, and we have to make the most of them, beginning next time out in Hungary.