Hulkenberg: If you snooze you lose in Formula 1

In qualifying at Sochi Autodrom, the yellow cars were a massive 1.6 seconds slower than the similarly Renault powered Red Bulls, at the end of race day it was worse with Nico Hulkenberg 12th, a lap behind the leader, and Carlos Sainz 17th and two laps adrift.

After the race, Hulkenberg did not mince his words, "If you snooze you lose in Formula 1. Ultimately we were just lacking pace and were just too slow."

"Even with the clean race and good conversation of the strategy, we didn’t get anywhere, didn’t get a result or points."

"Our package at the moment isn’t competitive enough," insisted the German who will welcome Daniel Ricciardo to the team next year.

By design or not, in tandem with Hulkenberg, Prost also spoke out about the sad state of affairs when he told Canal+ on Monday, "We haven't really progressed, in fact, we are regressing in some areas while the others have made good progress with their engines."

"It's very difficult right now because we are not going to bring many updates to the car or the engine as we are focussing on next year. However, we must be realistic and analyse what is happening because we are not at the level we need to be."

"Preparations for next season are going well, but we know that it will be impossible to catch up within a year. We would have liked to be closer to the others in this second half of the season, but we're not there and we should be aware of this," warned Prost.

Meanwhile, on Sunday evening after the race Renault team chief Cyril Abiteboul summed up: "Overall a weekend to put behind us; we knew we would struggle here and we gave it our best so we move on to Japan."

Ironically, before the race weekend in Sochi, Abiteboul criticised Max Verstappen for being the only driver complaining about engines...