Bahrain GP: Renault Saturday qualifying notes

The two Renaults will start seventh and seventeenth tomorrow - not quite what the French team had hoped for.

The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team finished qualifying for the Grand Prix of Bahrain disappointed, with the team's two drivers separated by a significant margin on the grid for tomorrow's race.

Jarno Trulli's lap met pre-qualifying expectations, and he finished among the group of closely-matched cars behind Michael Schumacher. He drove a clean lap and now expects to drive a strong, attacking race tomorrow.

Fernando Alonso missed the apex of the first corner of his qualifying lap, owing to a currently-unidentified brake problem. In spite of a relatively competitive second sector, he had already lost almost a second, and the lap was definitively spoiled when he ran wide in turn 14. He will start from seventeenth position.

Jarno Trulli:

"It was a pretty good qualifying session from my perspective. As we had seen yesterday and this morning, I am competitive in the first and third sectors, but there is still progress to be made in the second part of the lap. I am expecting a tough race tomorrow: the grip level is improving all the time and I believe the track will change significantly during the race itself. The car balance is good, so I think we can certainly hope to score more points tomorrow."

Fernando Alonso:

"I had big problems under braking this afternoon. We didn't change anything on the car, but I was locking the front wheels every time I had to brake hard. We know that we can still score points tomorrow, we saw that much in Malaysia, but it won't be easy from that starting position."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering:

"Jarno had a good lap and finished where we had expected him to be, if our estimates of our rivals' strategies are correct. Fernando appears to have suffered from a brake problem, which we will work to identify in order to see if it can be corrected under parc fermé rules. We remain confident for tomorrow's race: the Michelin tyres are performing very well, and we believe we have just sufficient margin on our brakes, which will be punished hard at this circuit."

Denis Chevrier, Engine Operations Manager:

"We went into second qualifying with the hope of getting two cars into the top eight. Jarno's performance has confirmed our pace in terms of pure performance, and I think he can hope for a strong race tomorrow. The obvious reasons for disappointment are that we failed to have a trouble-free session, and that our two drivers are separated by a significant gap. However, I believe points are still within Fernando's reach. We are confident in the solutions we have found for the race, and at least one of our drivers can expect to score a good number of points."

Jarno Trulli
Qualifying 1: 1:31.303, P7
Qualifying 2: 1:30.971, P7

Fernando Alonso
Qualifying 1: 1:31.040, P6
Qualifying 2: 1:34.130, P17

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