Kevin Magnussen says his points finish in the Russian Grand Prix has not led Renault to believe it can be regular top ten finishers.
“For sure it’s made everyone happy to finally get some points on the scoreboard but we’re not fooling ourselves to think that’s our level,” he said during today’s press conference in Spain.
“It was a little bit lucky with a lot of people having problems on the first laps and one of the Toro Rossos not finishing the race towards the end.”
“So, as I said, we’re not fooling ourselves to think that’s our level. We need to improve quite a bit before that will be our level – but, as I said, it’s nice to get points on the board.”
Neither Renault car made it beyond Q1 on Saturday in Sochi, leading Magnussen to single out the team’s one-lap pace as a significant weakness.
“It seems qualifying is our weak point,” he said. “It looks like people can turn things up for qualifying that we can’t. So that’s one thing to work on.”
He says the team are still feeling the effects of the lack of progress made by Lotus last season.
“We are behind on a lot of different areas and we just need to improve overall – because the situation we’re in at the moment is that we have a car that hasn’t been developed continuously all last year and we’re picking up on everything now,” said Magnussen.
“We need to be patient but at the same time need to work extremely hard because we need to catch up on people who are also improving. I think this last result shows that it is possible to score points and if anything happens like a first-lap incident, we need to be there and ready to take advantage.”
Mike (@mike)
12th May 2016, 22:10
Just saw the press conference. One of the most notable things was Alonso bringing up that F1 is not free to air in Spain. When he was talking about that, really hit that spot.
I think for Renault, this year is a rebuilding year. He’s driving well so they will surely keep him, so, I think for them I look forward to what they can do next year.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
12th May 2016, 22:41
Yeah, Alonso was spot on. I am starting to really like his views.