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Renault Hopeful of Matching Ferrari and McLaren Soon

When Renault's Robert Kubica set the fastest time of Q1 in Valencia, everybody started rubbing their eyes and hoped for a little miracle from the Enstone based team. Eventually, the Pole had to settle for 6th on the grid and 5th at the finish line, although he gave the impression, throughout the European weekend, that he could pull a rabbit out of the bag at any time.

Considering the positive outcome of last weekend's race for Renault – as they debuted brand new components, including the Red Bull-style blown diffuser – chief engineer Alan Permane admitted his optimism that the R30 will soon play catch up with Ferrari and even McLaren Mercedes.

We've made up ground on Mercedes and we're solidly the fourth quickest team at the moment. There's still a long way to go to catch up with Red Bull, but we're just behind McLaren and Ferrari and if we can keep improving the car like we've done so far, we can expect to be on terms with them soon,” said Permane.

Additionally, while confirming that Renault was fully satisfied with how the updated R30 behaved on the Valencia track – with both drivers inside the Top 10 in qualifying – the engineer promised that there is still much to be expected from the improvements debuted last weekend.

Everything performed as we expected it to and the new front wing and new blown floor worked very well. It always takes time to fully understand any updates you put on the car, and it's difficult to do that in just one weekend, so we feel there is still more potential to come from them. In fact, we can probably expect to get more of an advantage from the updates at Silverstone, especially the blown floor because there are a lot more high-speed corners where you're on the throttle through the corners,” added the Renault engineer.
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