Renault team principal Eric Boullier has said that Vitaly Petrov's latest mistake in qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps at the weekend shows that the Russian driver still has a lot to learn, but suggested his crash might help him in the long run.
Petrov took a step back in his 2010 development at Spa. After outqualifying team mate Robert Kubica for the first time all season at the Hungaroring and scoring a career-best 5th place finish, his Belgian weekend was ruined by a qualifying crash.
Petrov lost control of his car in the early moments of qualifying, spinning off when testing out the limits of the wet kerbing around the track and hitting the barriers.
The Russian driver was forced to line up 23rd on the grid, and although he recovered to 9th place by the end of the race, Boullier pointed out that the qualifying mistake was something that Petrov would have to learn from.
"It is sometimes hard to forgive a mistake like that he made, but this is F1 and it is not easy," Boullier was quoted as saying by Autosport.
"He did a very good race. He avoided all the traps from the rain and I have to say that he did a very good performance."
He went on: "It was good to put the car back in the points starting from where he was on the grid so he just needs to avoid this kind of mistake.
"But perhaps some good has come out of the bad, because it has maybe reminded him that he needs to stay concentrated and it is not because he had a good result in Budapest that it will be like this every weekend."
He added that he still felt Petrov had to progress more in order to secure a 2011 seat with the team, saying: "Yes he brought some points home, but we need to have a solid second driver."
Boullier also took time to praise the team's new F-duct, which the team raced for the first time at Spa, helping Kubica to a third place finish.
The Frenchman suggested that the superb pace shown from Kubica throughout the weekend was largely thanks to the F-duct.
"I am pretty sure than half the performance gain we made [in Belgium] was down to the F-duct," he bragged, "I have to pay tribute to the team because everybody was impressed that we fitted the cars with the F-duct and it worked straightaway - and was matching the simulation figures.
"It is clearly a good step forward."
He added: "The blown floor was clearly very challenging to make it work properly and it takes a couple of races to do it, and that is why it looks like we didn't improve much.
"The F-duct clearly was a bit step forward and now we have the same tools as everyone else on the grid it is pleasant to see our car is matching the pace of everyone else on the grid."
He added that he now felt that the Renault team had the performance potential to pass Mercedes GP in the fight for fourth in the constructors championship.
"I would be very pleased to have more podiums of course," he grinned, "It is definitely realistic when I see our performance level, and clearly now we set our expectations a little higher and we definitely need to take this fourth place."
Renault are fifth in the constructors standings after the Belgian GP, just 23 points behind the German team with six races to go.
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