Kubica optimistic on Renault strength

Robert, talk us through your qualifying session yesterday…

I’m pretty satisfied because seventh place is about what we expected before the session. The result confirms the pace we saw during the final practice session and it’s encouraging because we weren’t sure how competitive we would be here. Clearly the car is working well with the new updates we have this weekend, which are performing as the factory expected. The only problem was that I didn’t feel totally comfortable on the softer tyre. I don’t know why and we are going to look over the data to try and understand this. With a bit more confidence I could probably have been a bit quicker and made up another place on the gird.

Two cars in the top ten is an excellent result for the team…

It’s a great result and somebody said to me that this hasn’t happened since October 2008. This performance shows the progress we have made recently and it makes me optimistic, especially considering the development programme we have planned for the next few races. But as always our progress will depend on what our competitors do.

What are your hopes for the race?

In the races so far this season we’ve seen a big part of the race is decided in the first few laps. So it’s important to make a good start and not to lose any positions in the first couple of laps. After that I should be able to settle into my rhythm and take any opportunities that come up. Our race pace is generally pretty good so the objective has to be to score some big points.