Renault believes it will be back in the hunt for podium finishes from the Singapore Grand Prix, despite a difficult weekend in Italy.
Robert Kubica was no match for the pace-setting Ferrari and McLaren teams at Monza, and could only manage an eighth-place finish while teammate Vitaly Petrov failed to finish in the points. However, with the team having shown well on the kinds of tracks coming up on the calendar, Renault boss Eric Boullier is upbeat that his squad will be more competitive.
"Frankly in Italy we were not expecting to be in the same form as Spa, but dreaming of getting two cars in the points was maybe a little bit ambitious," Boullier said. "It would have been a good weekend here if we could have saved face and done this, but, unfortunately, it did not turn out to be like that. We were not expecting to be as fast or as good as Spa.
"But if I take all the package that we have now in a high-downforce configuration, things look promising. Our F-duct is working very well, our blown floor is working very well now and definitely on a traditional track layout like Singapore or Japan that are coming, we should be in a much better position, And I would not be surprised if we had the same form as Spa."
Kubica finished third in the Belgium Grand Prix with Renault's F-duct having delivered a good step forward in performance.
Boullier said that Renault planned to have just one more major aerodynamic update for the R30 in the final events of the season, with the team's focus now very much on its 2011 challenger.