The fact that Jolyon Palmer merely completed last Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix was no consolation for the Renault driver who finished last after what he labeled as a "catastrophically bad" performance.
While Renault racing director Frédéric Vasseur pointed to tyre degradation as the main culprit for the team's underperformance, Palmer believes an aero deficiency affecting the RS16 is also to blame.
"I'm down on aero, but we could only see it in qualifying," Palmer told Autosport.
"The safety car was definitely not good for the strategy. But I think we need to understand what's going on with the car first and then focus on the strategy.
"But overall, for me personally, I think the whole weekend was maybe my worst ever as a racing driver. It's been very bad."
Palmer vowed to keep his head down however and was at least pleased to get some race mileage under his belt after failing to run in Bahrain following a massive hydraulic failure.
"It's good experience, but a tough experience because it's looking pretty bad," he said.
"There's more stuff I'm learning and I've only done two Grands Prix in my life, so there are positives, but at the moment the negative is that the pace is pretty bad and that's obviously what the whole result comes down to.
"I will be pouring through data myself and in the simulator, but basically trying to analyse myself what's going on."
REPORT: Rosberg cruises home ahead of chaos in China
Chinese Grand Prix lap-by-lap as it happened
Eric Silbermann has breakfast with photographer Crispin Thruston
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