“It would be great to get Romain and Fernando through to Q3 in qualifying, so that we have some reasonable starting positions for the race. We want to be challenging for points and even the podium, which is a realistic target considering the performance level we have already demonstrated this season.”

Those sentiments are echoed by Renault F1 chief engineer Alan Permane – the man widely believed to have been the mystery 'Witness X' in the 'Singapore-gate' race-fixing scandal that very nearly led to the car maker being expelled from the top flight altogether – who predicts a unique challenge when the travelling circus arrives at the 5.55km, Hermann Tilke-designed track.

“We usually begin our preparations about two months ahead of the race,” he explained, “which is when we receive a detailed map showing the layout and characteristics of the circuit. This gives us an idea of the set-up we will need in terms of the downforce levels and the demands on the brakes and the engine. We then feed the circuit map into our computers to create a virtual circuit, where we can run simulations with a computer model of our car. This allows us to evaluate many different set-up options, which can be easily changed to help us work out a good base set-up.

“Once we have arrived at the circuit and run the car in free practice, we will send the real circuit data back to the factory, which can be used to run more accurate simulations. The logged data from Friday practice can also be used on our chassis dynamics rig to explore the ride characteristics of the circuit and can reveal improvements to the damping or perhaps to the spring rates. Any suggestions from the factory for improving the set-up of the car usually come through by the end of Friday, so that we can try them on Saturday morning ahead of qualifying.

“There are a couple of reasonably long straights, but it does look like it will be quite stop-start – a bit like the street circuit in Valencia. In terms of downforce, it will be on the higher side, although we won't run maximum downforce settings because of the long straights where straight-line speed will be important. There are a lot of right-angled corners, but it's difficult to predict the impact this will have on car set-up as it depends on the layout of the curbs. That's one thing we will examine during our track walk.

“What we do know already is that the drivers will want a car that is biased towards traction, as the circuit doesn't have high-speed changes of direction, which would require a stiffer car set-up. To aid good traction from the low-speed corners, we will aim to give the drivers a softer rear end. In terms of braking, our simulations have shown it to be similar to Valencia and Melbourne, so it's by no means an easy circuit on the brakes, but it's not as tough as Monza.

“I agree with Fernando that turns eleven, twelve and 13 will be interesting and certainly worth a lot of lap time. Drivers always enjoy the high-speed corners, but most of the gains can be found in these low-speed corners where you spend the most time. With this in mind, turns five, six and seven will also be a section of the lap where the car needs to work well so that we can maximise the gains in lap time.”