Bruno Senna leads Renault team-mate Vitaly Petrov during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Photo Credit: Lorenzo Bellanca/LAT Photographic
Renault have now failed to score points in the last three grand prix after coming away from today’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with only a thirteenth and a sixteenth place finish.
Vitaly Petrov was the highest placed of the two drivers, who suffered more problems with his car this afternoon. “It was quite a frustrating afternoon because my DRS was not working,” the Russian explained. “We thought we could have a good fight with the cars in front, but we were pretty helpless, so we decided to change the strategy.
“When I first stopped, we put fresh medium tyres on but unfortunately these did not last long enough so we returned to the pits on lap 38 to change to the soft. Unfortunately that ended up being too slow. The pace was not good enough to score points and that's the reality.”
Bruno Senna had a pretty calamitous race, and will definitely be hoping for better fortunes at his home race in a couple of weeks time. “Let's be honest here – there's not a crumb of comfort to take from that performance,” said the Brazilian. “We suffered from a KERS failure, drive through penalty and a car which was not on the money at this particular track. Put those together and you see why I finished where I did. There was lots of lost time to make up and, strategically, we took a gamble that didn't pay off.
“I certainly think that overall this weekend my pace was as good as it could have been. Maybe for Brazil we will have a better baseline, and let's hope we have a better race weekend.”
