Wednesday 25 June at 16:48 : Nelson Piquet has rubbished recent rumours that he had been given a limited number of races to up his game or be dumped by the Renault team.

The Brazilian rookie, who may have turned around his disappointing form with a promising run to seventh place at Magny-Cours, dismissed the reports as "bullsh*t" pedalled by the press.

He told the British broadcaster ITV that similar rumours dogged his predecessor Heikki Kovalainen last year and "absolutely nothing happened".

"I think a team cannot work that way by judging and kicking out people," Piquet, 22, insisted.

He suggested that Renault learned by sacking Jarno Trulli and replacing him with Jacques Villeneuve in 2004 that "it's not the way it works in formula one".

"It didn't work at all and I think they learned about that. I think they know to work a bit better than just sacking people like that," Piquet said at the Silverstone test.