MANAMA, April 6 (Reuters) - Brazilian rookie Nelson Piquet drew strong support from his Renault Formula One team in Bahrain on Sunday despite having finished only one of his three races to date and scored no points.

"I think he has had a damn good start," engineering head Pat Symonds told reporters at Sakhir. "It's been rocky, but that only goes to emphasise how good he's been.

"Before the start of the season a lot of people were wondering how it would go and when he had a very difficult Australian Grand Prix it probably just served to focus on 'Was it all going to go wrong?'

"But he bounced back in Malaysia very strongly and he has been extremely strong here. I know ultimately that (team mate) Fernando (Alonso) outqualified him but that is nothing to be ashamed of," added the Briton.

"Through practice Nelson was doing a damn good job in developing the car and really getting on with it, so I am very pleased with the start to his year other than the fact that I feel we as a team have let him down a bit."

Piquet, the son of his namesake triple champion, joined the former champions after a year as test driver.

While Spain's double world champion Alonso, returning after a year with McLaren has finished all three of his races in the top 10 and scored points in two of them, Piquet has just one 11th place to his credit.

He spun on some oil early in the race and then retired with a gearbox problem after his second pit stop.

"The result was not what we wanted but I was able to learn a lot again this weekend and that is what I need to keep doing," he said.