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Renault claims to be level with Mercedes

Renault believes it is faster than Mercedes over long runs © Getty Images

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Renault is confident it has bridged the performance gap to Mercedes and now just has to find a tiny bit more qualifying pace to start finishing ahead of the German squad.

Mercedes is considered to be one of the top four teams and felt it had also made a big step forward in Turkey, after finishing fourth and fifth. However, Renault's Robert Kubica finished just behind the second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and chief engineer Alan Permane believes he would have gone quicker had he been able to overtake.

"Our performance in Turkey suggests that our race pace is better than Mercedes, but they are just ahead of us on qualifying pace, and the same was true in Barcelona," Permane said. "When I spoke to Robert [Kubica] after the race he felt that Rosberg was holding him up and that he could have gone quite a bit quicker. So it's down to us to make sure we do a better job in qualifying so that we can get ahead of them and exploit the full potential of our car."

Renault has made significant progress since the start of the season and Permane said it had been helped by its findings in the wind tunnel translating to the track.

"The biggest update [in Turkey] was new front wing which certainly brought the benefits we were expecting and the feedback from the drivers was positive," he added. "We managed to do a proper back-to-back assessment compared with the older version of the wing on Friday and the numbers we measured at the track confirmed our findings in the wind tunnel. Our strategy of bringing updates to every race so far this season has been one of our strengths and is a testament to all the effort that is going on back at the factory. In fact we already have another version of the front wing in the pipeline, which will be available in a few races time and should give us another step forward on downforce."

Permane believes the car is best suited to slow-speed circuits like Monaco - where it qualified on the front row of the grid - but was confident it could be improved for other upcoming circuits too.

"I think we do have a car that is adaptable and easy to drive," he said. "Obviously Monaco was a high point for us and it's clear that the R30 is very well suited to those lower-speed circuits, but we're working hard to ensure we are just as competitive on all types of circuit. We expect to continue our current level of competitiveness in Canada where we will have further upgrades to the car. We also have good upgrade packages planned for Valencia and Silverstone, which will hopefully allow us to move ahead of Mercedes."

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