Kubica chasing race wins

Having finished on the podium three times during his maiden season with Renault, Robert Kubica is confident he will secure his first race win with the team this year

The Pole has one race victory to his name, having triumphed at the Canadian Grand Prix in 2008 while driving for the BMW-Sauber outfit and he's now looking to add another one to his resume with the Enstone-based team.

After a tumultuous time behind the scenes at the end of 2009, Renault impressed many with their strong showing in 2010 which saw Kubica finish eighth on the Drivers' standings.

The 26-year-old is now looking to press on from the foundations laid last year, and believes that the team are well placed to do so.

"I am confident that 2011 will be a good season because during this winter the team were able to work with a more stable financial and management situation, compared to one year ago," Kubica told the official Formula One website.

"[Team principal] Eric Boullier said that he wants our car to win races this year - he expressed exactly what I feel!"

Kubica's assertion that the team is in a stable position may seem strange considering their ongoing legal wrangle with Tony Ferndanes' Team Lotus outfit, but Kubica insists that this does not affect the inner workings of the team.

"Well, I didn't drive for Renault in 2009 and all the changes happened during the winter, before I really started to work with my new team," he explained.

"There was an important reshuffle of shareholders, but the core of the team remained almost unchanged. This is what I have been told is happening again now."

Former Renault Director of Engineering, Pat Symonds, agrees that the team are looking impressive heading into the new season.

"I think we'll see the same old protagonists fighting it out at the front, but Renault are in a good position," Symonds told crash.net.

"I have my biases having worked there for a long while, but they're a great group of guys and they took a very bold step last year in updating their wind tunnel over the winter. That's not something where you just wake up one morning and say 'I'm going to do it' - you have to plan it a long way in advance, and of course they put in a huge CFD facility prior to that so under the resource restrictions they could switch their work from the wind tunnel to CFD while the wind tunnel was being improved.

"I know that the wind tunnel is a huge improvement, and I think that was shown in the progress they made through the year - but with Mercedes, I'm not so sure. It's a very downsized team from the team that made the Brawn. I think the jury is still out, but I would probably favour Renault going in front of Mercedes," he added.

Source: Planet-F1