In the first two races of the season, and Malaysia is particular, Renault's performance has see-sawed from one extreme to the other, and nobody is more puzzled by the situation that Pat Symonds.

"If you look at the sector times in Malaysia, it is relatively obvious that we were less competitive in the parts of the circuit that featured the high-speed corners," says the Englishman. "Sakhir is not a circuit with many high-speed corners, so it should be intrinsically a little kinder to us. But can I predict we will make a step forward in competitiveness? To be honest, it's very hard to make any predictions at all at the moment, and I think a number of people up and down the pit-lane are scratching their heads right now."

Asked to explain his comment, he continues: "At Renault, the drivers are complaining of a lack of grip from the car, but we are also seeing inconsistency in its performance," he admits. "We were relatively stronger on Friday and Sunday in Malaysia, when compared to our performance on Saturday.

"At the front of the field, we saw a huge shift from Ferrari and McLaren between the opening two races, and a number of teams saw their two drivers deliver very different levels of performance. To my mind, that suggests that while the tyre situation is stable for everybody, there are still plenty of questions to be answered in terms of achieving consistent, reliable performance."

With regards his own team's performance, which leaves the World Champions trailing McLaren, Ferrari and BMW, when this time last season the French team enjoyed a 13 point advantage over its nearest rivals, Symonds rules out a knee-jerk reaction.

"I think it is obvious to say that it is not a simple diagnosis," he says. "The first mistake we could make would be a knee-jerk reaction. The people working on the situation, are the same people who won two world championships in the last two years. We have the same tools, the same methodology, and the same confidence in our ability to succeed. Now, we need time and application to do so - and I have every faith in our capacity to bounce back strongly."