Renault refuse to play blame game

Renault’s engineering director Pat Symonds has stressed no individual should be blamed for the team’s failure to win the Chinese Grand Prix last week.

Michael Schumacher won the race in Shanghai ahead of Fernando Alonso last Sunday to move to the top of the drivers’ standings for the first time this season as a series of errors saw Renault hand the German his 91st win in Formula One.

A mid-race tyre problem coupled with a botched pit-stop hindered Fernando Alonso’s chances of winning the race while the world champion was also critical of the performance of teammate Giancarlo Fisichella.

But Symonds stressed that mistakes are part of life in Formula One and that the team needs to pull together ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, the penultimate race of the season.

“Win or lose, we always do so as a team,” he said.

“Nobody is singled out. We know mistakes happen: engineers and mechanics can, and do, make errors, a driver can run off track, a situation can be misunderstood.

“But blaming this or that individual for any situation is always a mistake. That is the way we have always worked – and will continue to.”

Symonds stressed the team had held a post-mortem into the defeat and that the lessons will be learned as Renault aim to retain both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles.

“Our great strength at Renault is our ability to question ourselves rigorously,” he said.

“After a disappointing race like China, for example, we spent a log time analysing why we did not achieve a better result.

“We reviewed everything and made a number of discoveries. The result is that we are feeling strong psychologically this weekend: there are no doubts over what happened last week, and we know that the events in Shanghai will have zero impact on our performance this weekend.”