After two rounds of the 2006 Formula One world Championship, Renault enjoyed a lead of 13 points over its nearest rivals. This year, they are in fourth place, trailing BMW - in only its second season as a manufacturer - by two points.

Some claim that the French outfit is suffering the loss of its two-time World Champion, Fernando Alonso, to McLaren. However, Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen don't agree.

"Fernando is a great driver," Fisichella told reporters today, "but at the moment we need more than a second, and there are no drivers who can be a second quicker than everyone else.

"So even with Fernando, it would be exactly the same story," he added. "I don't think it is because he has left that we are going down."

Meanwhile, at the official FIA press conference, his Finnish teammate was echoing similar sentiments.

"Clearly our pace compared to the front runners is so big," he admitted, "I think the engineers have calculated it at about 1.8 percent in terms of lap time - so I don't think even Alonso would be able to overcome that deficit.

"That's not what we're looking at the moment," Kovalainen continued. "We're clearly trying to understand the car better, give it better feeling for the driver, so we are able to push more. That's my opinion."

Looking ahead to this weekend's race, Fisichella was unable to offer his fans, or those of his team, much comfort.

"For this race we are going to have exactly the same car as in Malaysia," said the Italian. "So we just can expect again to fight to score points, unless the circuit is good for us but I'm not so optimistic of that."

While Kovalainen was equally pessimistic.

"Unless there has been a miracle happening, that we don't know about, I think this weekend the gap to the leaders is going to be more or less the same," he admitted.