Renault technical boss Pat Symonds is confident that the team's Valencia difficulties do not mark the start of a slump.
After promising performances in Germany - where Nelson Piquet benefited from a conveniently-timed safety car to pull off a shock podium - and Hungary, Renault lost ground in Spain.
Fernando Alonso and Piquet only qualified 12th and 15th, with the former taken out on the first lap and Piquet finishing a quiet 11th.
But Symonds dismissed any thoughts that Valencia indicated a downward trend, suggesting that the situation would have been very different if traffic and errors hadn't compromised Alonso's qualifying performance.
He denied that there was any need to 'bounce back' at Spa this weekend.
"The source of our problems seemed to be qualifying, where we underperformed," said Symonds.
"If Fernando had managed a couple of clean laps in Q2, I think he would have been comfortably through to the final part of qualifying.
"It's not really a question of bouncing back because we know that we have a very definite level of performance that is strong enough to allow us to run in the top ten."
Alonso agreed that Valencia was nothing more than a blip which would be forgotten after the Spa weekend.
"Even though the European Grand Prix turned out to be a race to forget, we should not lower our aims," he said.
"I am sure that the team is giving 100 percent to achieve our objective and I will also give my maximum to try and get a strong result and score some points.
"At the beginning of the season things were not easy, but we have improved and we are determined to continue in this direction."
The Valencia result has left Renault 10 points adrift of Toyota in the battle for fourth in the constructors' standings, but Symonds remains bullish - pointing out how much the team had improved since its poor start to 2008.
"We recognise that our start to the season had far too much hangover from last year, but I think we recovered well from that and have shown that we can out-develop most of our rivals," he said.
"We desperately want that fourth place and we are going to be fighting hard to try and get it."
Source: ITV.com/F1
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