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F1: Renault “Proud” of Kovalainen Fourth
Written by: Adam Cooper
RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
06/12/2007 - 07:00 PM
Montreal, Canada
 
Kovalainen scored a career-best result in Canada. (LAT Photo) ยป More Photos

Renault's race engineering chief Alan Permane says that the team was more than happy with Heikki Kovalainen's run to fourth place in Montreal, after the Finn's reputation had taken a battering in recent weeks.

The Finn was given a 10-place grid penalty after an engine failure on Saturday, but also endured a crash in Friday and another in qualifying. Despite that he put in a faultless race to work his way up the order and keep out of trouble.

"We're very pleased with and proud of the result," Permane told SPEEDtv.com. "It's exactly what he needed. He obviously had a terrible weekend, crashed twice, lost an engine, and to come from the back of the grid to fourth in a race with a lot of safety cars does a world of good for his confidence.

"When we sat down and chatted before the race I said what we need is for you to have a solid race and get some confidence back for the USA, and he's done that. I think he reacted very well,
especially at the end when he had Raikkonen behind him and Fernando not far away."



Catch up on the developments in Formula 1 each month in RACER. Steve Cooper gets the scoop on the decline of the Renault F1 team this season, and its efforts to turn the tide in our July issue, on sale now.


Cleverly Renault put Heikki on the unpopular supersoft tIres in the middle of the race, so he was on the preferred primes in the latter stages, when many of his rivals were struggling.

"With the pace that he had you're not going to do anything with a conventional race from the back, so we had done something a little bit odd. We fuelled him quite long, and we did some odd things in strategy in case of safety cars, and it worked out for us. We were lucky in that respect."