MANAMA - FERNANDO Alonso did not 'brake-test' rival Lewis Hamilton to cause an accident during Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix - but will have a vastly-improved car at the Spanish Grand Prix, his Renault team confirmed on Monday.

Both Renault, and double world champion driver Spaniard Alonso, made clear there was no deliberate 'slowing' or braking to make Hamilton drive into the Renault car on lap two of the race.

Alonso said, 'I think we were running too close and for sure maybe he didn't realise how close we were. He jumped into my rear wing. I am sure on the first couple of laps, if you are eighth or ninth, you try to recover places too quickly.'

He added, 'Pat Symonds (Renault engineering chief) told me now that rumour and he has printed now the data to show everybody. It is totally rubbish, but what can I do?' ,p>Renault's print of the telemetry showed Alonso was flat on the throttle from the exit and did not touch his brakes. He accelerated in a totally predictable manner.

Hamilton did not accuse Alonso of any 'dirty tactics' and blamed himself for a wretched performance.

Symonds, Renault's executive director of engineering, said that Alonso had done nothing to contribute to the accident.

'Fernando was coming out of the turn and accelerating down the straight,' explained Symonds.

'He reached fifth gear, at 227km/h, on full throttle, no touching of the brakes or anything like that. And you can see on the accelerometer the impact. He got hit from behind.

'I think all I can say from our side is that there is no blame attributable to Fernando, which is what some of the speculation might be. But it does say we are not getting onto the straights very well, we are suffering a bit with traction, engine speed and engine torque.'

When asked about the view of some experts in the paddock who believed it could have been a brake test, Symonds said: 'Well, they are not as expert as they think then. We have the data and there is nothing untoward there. You don't need to be an expert to see that.'

Symonds added that Renault had a huge development programme for their car and many improvements would be unveiled at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona later in April.

'Every team in the paddock has big programmes that they shore up over the first three races, where you don't get a great deal of change in the cars. So there is a lot coming,' he said.

'We are working with an updated aero package that is going quite well, I must say. We ran some elements of it at Elvington at the beginning of this week and we are reasonably happy with that. We have also got some good developments on the suspension side as well.

'But it is no good just doing the updates and saying that is it, because everything is relative. We have to make a step relative to the others, so I hope there is enough in what we have done that will give us that. I hope there is.'

Symonds said he felt the revised R28 updates could be worth around half a second per lap - which may be enough to push Alonso into the scrap for points further up the field. -- AFP