[Jack_Bauer]

Originally Posted by Wouter Melissen

He was only 3/10s slower than the double world champ team mate, so it's not so bad this time. Remember Kovalainen in the first half of the previous season? It seems that the Renault is still not a very good car and not particularly kind to rookies.

Piquet was on soft tyres, Alonso on the harder tyre. The Renault car still isn't very impressive, but the likes of Vettel and even Sutil have shown flashes of excellence in much worse cars this season. Piquet has shown neither pace nor consistency in either practice, qualifying or race situations.

Also, by this point in the season last year Kovalainen had settled more and had already beaten his teammate at one race and was right on his pace.