Briatore targets points

A few hours before the start of the Austrian Grand Prix, Flavio Briatore, Managing Director of the Renault F1Team, talks about his expectations. With Jarno sharing the third row of the grid with a Ferrari, the qualifying went pretty well. "It ...

A few hours before the start of the Austrian Grand Prix, Flavio Briatore, Managing Director of the Renault F1Team, talks about his expectations.

With Jarno sharing the third row of the grid with a Ferrari, the qualifying went pretty well. "It means we can target some good points here," Flavio says. "I think most of the teams have opted for a two-stops strategy, apart from Heidfeld. We think this Sauber is on three pitstops. Moreover, we should be able to grap a couple of places at the start thanks to our competitive launch control."

Flavio Briatore.

Photo by Renault F1.

Who will be the team's rivals today? "Michael's Ferrari could be in a different league," Flavio reckons. "And I don't think we could be able to fight with Raikkonen's McLaren. After that, everything is open. We'll have a very close fight with Williams: the FW25s have been competitive all week-end, but their performance seem to drop dramatically in race conditions."

The tyre wear could also play a role today. "We think Michelin and the other tyre manufacturer both have a competitive race tyre, so we won't have any advantage on that side," Flavio confirms. "This means that the BARs could fight for points this time. We'll have to be careful with our strategy in order to be ahead of them."

Finally, Fernando's race might be quite tough. "Starting so far back is a big disadvantage, of course," Flavio concludes. "There's not much we can do strategy-wise in order to help him. He'll have to fight hard. We've looked at the possibility to start the race from the pitlane, with a different fuel load, but that wouldn't change anything. So Fernando will start from the grid."