Gascoyne: It's going to be a difficult race!

By role
May 13 2003

Mike Gascoyne, Renault's Technical Director is expecting a difficult weekend at the Austrian GP. After the great performance in Barcelona the team hits the reality of a track in which engine is key in order to be at the front of the grid.

Gascoyne was thrilled to see the cars that he overlooks get the third podium in 5 races at Barcelona:

"Throughout the whole weekend in Spain, our cars showed that they can be very competitive and this resulted in Fernando's excellent second place. However, Jarno's accident
was a disappointment, however, as he was also in a position to finish in the points. Still, it’s encouraging to see that we are capable of battling it out with the top teams and even making it onto the podium."

The team was testing hard last week in preparations of the Austrian and of the Monaco GP:

"We worked closely with Michelin to get the tyres right for the
upcoming races in Austria and Monaco. We also made some
final adjustments to the engine version to be used at the
Austrian Grand Prix. In terms of aerodynamics, we just did
the normal work as we don't anticipate there being any major
changes for this Grand Prix."

Gascoyne is quite confident that they can challange for better results than a piodium in the Monaco GP as he said earlier on an interview with Autosport Online.

However, he knows that renault will find it hard at Austria:

"The A1-Ring certainly is very different from the Spanish circuit: it features slower bends leading into straights where the cars are flat-out. This favours the cars with better engine performance over those with the best aerodynamics. It's going to be a difficult race as we have to expect that we are going to be less competitive than we were in Spain.
Nevertheless, the engine development we have been working on should give us some additional horsepower to work with, enabling us to boost performance."