Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRenault

Testing has been 'a little bit disastrous' - Palmer

Jolyon Palmer says testing has been "a little bit disastrous" for him personally but has confidence in Renault's new RS16.

The British rookie suffered from a number of reliability issues on the first two days of the first test, limiting him to just 79 laps over the first week. After Kevin Magnussen completed over 100 laps per day for the next four days, Palmer was again hit by problems on the penultimate day of running to leave him with a total of 177 laps after three days.

With more problems limiting running in the morning session, Palmer was left frustrated by his lack of track time, though he would go on to add another 50 laps in the afternoon.

"It has been a little bit disastrous to be honest," Palmer said. "I don’t think we [had] done 200 laps for four days and with four hours left. That is obviously not what you want when you are a rookie trying to turn up in Melbourne and do a good job, but the car at least is reasonable. The base line car."

However, Palmer is confident the team at least will be fully prepared for the start of the season.

"I think everything will be ready. In Melbourne everything will be different – you are in to a race weekend, and everything is going to be ready.

"We know that we have got some more coming (for the car) which is exciting, and I am already looking forward to Friday in Melbourne when suddenly we will see 22 cars on track, and on Friday we will be closer to knowing where everybody is in terms of performance."

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.