Nelsinho Piquet has brushed off suggestions he is under pressure to keep his seat at
Renault, insisting the French concern knows better than to ditch drivers mid-season from past experience.
There have been numerous suggestions over the first part of the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship campaign that the Brazilian's days at the Enstone-based outfit are numbered, as he endured a string of patchy performances marred by rookie errors, poor pace and sheer ill-fortune. Paddock whispers had him being replaced by anyone from
Super Aguri refugees
Takuma Sato and
Anthony Davidson to Renault test driver and GP2 Asia Series Champion Romain Grosjean.
Whilst Piquet silenced some of those critics with a strong run in France last weekend, passing double world champion team-mate
Fernando Alonso for seventh place in the race's closing stages to seal his maiden points in the top flight, the 22-year-old insists it will not change his approach in any way – and dismissed any rumours that he is embroiled in a battle against time to hold onto his drive.
“I've been waiting for it for a long time,” he told
Crash.net of his Magny-Cours result during pre-British Grand Prix testing at
Silverstone this week. “Obviously it finally arrived, but it's not going to change anything inside me. I'm still going to be fighting like crazy for the rest of the championship, as I have been doing since the beginning of the year.
“The same thing happened last year with Heikki [Kovalainen], and Renault didn't do anything. Despite the whole bullsh*t that the press talk about, absolutely nothing happened.
“I think they (Renault) have seen that judging people and kicking them out and replacing them with someone else doesn't work; the last time that happened was [when they replaced
Jarno Trulli with Jacques] Villeneuve, which didn't work at all.
“I think they learned from that, and I think Flavio [Briatore – Renault managing director] and the team know to work a bit better than just sacking people like that. That's not the way it works in
Formula 1.”
