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<body> <Table Width="550" border="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" cellpadding="0"><TR><TD Width="35"><IMG SRC="//www.totalmotorsport.com/images/spacer.gif" WIDTH="35" HEIGHT="1"></td><td> <CENTER><Table border="0" width="100%"> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="5">F-1</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2">03/04/2004</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="4">Renault Qualifying Report</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="3">French Team Not Happy</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="1">  </FONT></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2">The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team finished qualifying for the Grand Prix of Bahrain disappointed, with the team's two drivers separated by a significant margin on the grid for tomorrow's race. <BR> <BR> Jarno Trulli's lap met pre-qualifying expectations, and he finished among the group of closely-matched cars behind Michael Schumacher. He drove a clean lap and now expects to drive a strong, attacking race tomorrow. <BR> <BR> Fernando Alonso missed the apex of the first corner of his qualifying lap, owing to a currently-unidentified brake problem. In spite of a relatively competitive second sector, he had already lost almost a second, and the lap was definitively spoiled when he ran wide in turn 14. He will start from seventeenth position. <BR> <BR> <B>Jarno Trulli: </B><BR> "It was a pretty good qualifying session from my perspective. As we had seen yesterday and this morning, I am competitive in the first and third sectors, but there is still progress to be made in the second part of the lap. I am expecting a tough race tomorrow: the grip level is improving all the time and I believe the track will change significantly during the race itself. The car balance is good, so I think we can certainly hope to score more points tomorrow." <BR> <BR> <B>Fernando Alonso:</B> <BR> "I had big problems under braking this afternoon. We didn't change anything on the car, but I was locking the front wheels every time I had to brake hard. We know that we can still score points tomorrow, we saw that much in Malaysia, but it won't be easy from that starting position." <BR> <BR> <B>Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: </B><BR> "Jarno had a good lap and finished where we had expected him to be, if our estimates of our rivals' strategies are correct. Fernando appears to have suffered from a brake problem, which we will work to identify in order to see if it can be corrected under parc fermé rules. We remain confident for tomorrow's race: the Michelin tyres are performing very well, and we believe we have just sufficient margin on our brakes, which will be punished hard at this circuit." <BR> <BR> <B>Denis Chevrier, Engine Operations Manager:</B> <BR> "We went into second qualifying with the hope of getting two cars into the top eight. Jarno's performance has confirmed our pace in terms of pure performance, and I think he can hope for a strong race tomorrow. The obvious reasons for disappointment are that we failed to have a trouble-free session, and that our two drivers are separated by a significant gap. However, I believe points are still within Fernando's reach. We are confident in the solutions we have found for the race, and at least one of our drivers can expect to score a good number of points." <BR> <BR> </FONT></TD></TR> </TABLE><BR> </CENTER> <BR><CENTER><font size="1" color="#808080" face="Tahoma">Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport</font></CENTER> </td> </tr> </table> </body>