In a wide-ranging interview with crash.net, Stoffel Vandoorne believes there hasn't been much to separate him and team-mate Fernando Alonso in 2018: ''Yeah. Like I said before, I think the statistics are one thing, but the actual reality is another. A lot of the qualifyings, at the start of the season we’ve come out with a bit of bad luck, some things that went wrong that we didn’t have in our own control. Some of the qualifying sessions, we came out and we should have been ahead of Fernando because of some things that happened. I think the gap between us is extremely small. Sometimes a bit of luck is involved as well. I think today showed how close things are when everything more or less runs normally.'' 

Down at Sauber, Charles Leclerc is always looking to improve on things, the young star from Monaco told Motorsport.com: ''After every race I always try to find a negative about myself and try to improve them. 

It has gone well for now but it's not like I feel completely confident. I'm not someone that always feels confident about himself. 

I'm always trying to improve and I think that's also a strength. 

As a team we can still do some improvements with the brakes because we are still struggling. 

We need to be a little bit careful because I believe that the next four or five races will be a lot more difficult for us. We have to see but I'm extremely happy with the races we've made until now. 

We have taken every opportunity that we had to score points and of this we should be very proud. You need more downforce on tracks like Le Castellet or the four or five other races after. 

That's where we are lacking at the moment so we'll work and hopefully we'll improve but at the moment it's our downside." 

The future of Fernando Alonso is a big discussion point at present and the Spaniard explained that how the future of F1 will be could play an important role in what he decides to do: "The last championship car I had was 2007. All the rest has been always quite far off from the performance at the top, or the winning team that season. 

So, 11 years after that moment, I don't think there is a problem [with not having a car to win titles]. 

The biggest thing for me is the direction that Formula 1 goes. I don't think too much in how competitive you will be next year because it's impossible to predict, it's just about the sport. 

It's a constructors' world championship, it's not a drivers' world championship. 

In some interesting moves between teams, Renault has signed Mercedes' head of powertrain integration Matthew Harman to work as its new deputy chief designer from September of this year.  

"We are delighted to have attracted someone of Matthew's calibre to enable the team to anticipate on the design cycle of future cars, a crucial benefit, something we are currently missing since the team's acquisition and that will become even more important with the upcoming changes planned for 2021," said Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul.