Kevin Magnussen is hopeful that Renault can score its first points of the season in this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix after an encouraging display in Australia two weeks ago.
Renault made its return to Formula 1 as a constructor in Melbourne on March 20, and narrowly missed out on points as Jolyon Palmer finished 11th ahead of Magnussen in P12.
Despite having a rushed winter due to the late nature of Renault’s takeover of Lotus, the team impressed many in Australia and may well have scored points had it not been for an early puncture for Magnussen.
Looking ahead to this weekend’s race in Bahrain, Magnussen said that he believes points are within Renault’s reach.
“Looking forward to getting back in the car,” Magnussen said. “Pretty good weekend in Melbourne where even though I didn’t have a perfect race weekend personally, we got a good result in terms of where we thought we were.
“It showed we have a good car, and we can actually fight for points, so hopefully this race we can go for points.
“It was pretty clear in Melbourne that we can get points if we get it right. That should be the aim for this weekend, getting points.”
After missing the 2015 season while working as McLaren’s reserve driver, Magnussen is looking forward to racing under the lights in Bahrain for the first time since 2014.
“It’s quite a different race because it’s a night race. You start in semi-dark and then it goes full dark under artificial light,” Magnussen said.
“It’s a cool race because I think the cars look cool in that light. It’s just nice to see something different.
“Usually it’s quite hot but this weekend I think it’s going to be less hot. It’s a track that is quite hard on the rear tires because there’s a lot of corners where you have a long exit of the corner and you’re really working your rear tires hard.”
