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F1: Renault Not Worried by Fisichella’s Form
Written by: Adam Cooper
RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
05/21/2007 - 07:00 PM
Barcelona, Spain
 


Fisichella ran behind Kovalainen for the entire Spanish GP weekend. (LAT Photo) ยป More Photos

Renault's race engineering chief Alan Permane says that the team was not concerned by Giancarlo Fisichella's disappointing weekend in Spain, where he was outperformed by rookie teammate Heikki Kovalainen.

Permane says that the Finnish youngster had better luck in the build-up to qualifying, which gave him an edge over his veteran teammate. Both men had their races ruined by a problem at the fuel stops.

"It's no secret that the car has been quite difficult," Permane told SPEEDtv.com. "And Heikki just got it very well set up. He did a great job with his engineers, and had it really to his liking. Giancarlo was never super comfortable with the car. He lost a lot of time on Saturday morning, when we had a problem with one of the control systems.

"He lost half the session then, and that didn't help things. He went into qualifying not being super composed, and that was all it was really. If you look at the fuel corrected qualifying times, Heikki is a tiny bit quicker, but it's very, very close. Fisi had two more laps of fuel.

"Giancarlo's certainly been on top of the car in the first two races, and that's probably because of his experience. He's driven difficult cars in the past, and he's got the
best out of them. That's probably what it is more than anything, Heikki is learning very quickly, and he's getting on top of things as well."



Catch up on the latest in IndyCar racing each month in RACER. Jeff Olson gets inside the new and improved Andretti Green Racing team in our June issue, on sale now.


Permane says that the team hasn't written off its season just yet, and insists that the team is aware of the R27's major shortcomings.

"We know we've got a particular problem with the car, and to be honest if we get on top of that, and we perform how we should perform, we will be in hugely better shape.

"If we find the root cause of our performance deficit, and we cure that and we're where we think we should be, then we'll make a huge step. We haven't stopped developing the car to concentrate solely on that, we're still running our normal development schedule.

"We've got developments coming through all the time. At every race there will be something new, and there will be bigger updates and regular steps through the season."