Welcome to F1Minute - Vitaly Petrov hits out, and backtracks, at poor Renault performance.

This week, Renault driver Vitaly Petrov was interviewed on Russian television and admitted that he couldn’t keep his frustrations about the slow Renault car inside any longer. He was quoted as saying: “At the beginning of the year, for the first five or six races, we looked really strong... it was easy for us to pass from Q2 to Q3 using one set of tyres... but when the windtunnel developments came, the new parts, because of the front exhausts, they didn’t work.”

He added: “We worked on the front wing, the rear wing, the diffusers, the floor - but whatever we changed it was useless.”

After a couple of days, and after seeing his quotes in the press, Petrov backtracked on his words, in an email to the team, saying: “I expressed myself in an inappropriate manner, I criticised the team, your work and our lack of performance. That was unnecessary and I wish to apologise.”

Eric Boullier has since said the matter is just an incident and is closed, but with speculation rife over Renault’s line up for 2012, Petrov has not timed his outburst very well.