F1: Briatore denies Renault crisis

[Rory Phoulorie]

Thursday 3rd May 2007

Flavio Briatore has denied reports that Renault recently held a crisis meeting in an attempt to solve their on-going problems.

The 2007 season has kicked off in disappointing fashion for Renault, who have struggled to come to terms with their new Bridgestone rubber.

The result of which has been a dramatic loss of pace, with the Anglo/French squad roughly a second off the pace of the front-running McLarens and Ferraris. Renault, though, have also fallen behind BMW and are, at a push, only the fourth best team on the grid this season.

The reigning World Champions have also yet to claim a single podium finish this season never mind a race win. In fact after three races, the team already trails Championship-leaders McLaren by 35 points.

However, according to Briatore, that doesn't mean Renault are in a crisis situation.

"To have a crisis meeting you first need a crisis, and we don't have one," he told the official Formula One website.

"There is a gap in our performance compared to the top teams, and we need to make that up. We will do it by working hard and trusting in our engineers to find the solutions, not by panicking.

"We have plans for our development and for solving the problems, and we will follow them.

"As always, we have to balance that against designing and developing next year's car, and perhaps we will find some concepts that are relevant for this year.

"But finding the right compromise is always one of the challenges in F1, and we have not given up on 2007."


http://www.planet-f1.com/story/0,18954,3213_2104409,00.html