New floor solves Palmer's handling troubles

40

Jolyon Palmer believes Renault has found the root cause of his recent handling troubles after replacing his floor before qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix.

After an encouraging first race in Australia, Palmer had struggled somewhat and was last on the road in China before also being off the pace during Friday practice in Russia. Following FP2, Palmer said he was not confident Renault would find a fix but changing the floor overnight resulted in him qualifying less than 0.1s off team-mate Kevin Magnussen.

"Happy, finally I can drive the car again," Palmer said. "Changed the floor overnight and the car feels normal. FP3 immediately I could push and it wasn't doing anything strange. Qualifying, 18th is not fantastic but at least for me personally it is actually enjoyable to drive and I can push and I think we can have a good race.

"It's a new [floor], same spec - not upgraded - but new ... It wasn't working as we'd hoped. They couldn't see it clearly on the numbers, but something has clearly not been working very well. Yesterday was very bad, China was very bad and we didn't understand it. Changed the floor, that was all, we had a new one available, and immediately first lap today it was good.

"I changed [the floor] after Melbourne actually and then I changed to this one. Bahrain, China, not very happy. Yesterday not very happy and then today happy days again."

While pleased to be confident in the car again, Palmer admits it was tough while he didn't have a solution for his lack of pace.

"Formula 1's quite a tough world when things are not going well and it's harder when you're a rookie and it's not going well. I'm a GP2 champion but there's plenty of people that can question me when I come last in a grand prix or get outqualified by 0.9s by a team-mate.

"It's not like I can say ... I did a good race in Melbourne which gave me confidence personally but for the rest of the world I think people were quite quick to criticise because all the sessions are covered and the analysis that people do now is huge. So it's not easy but I just kept faith in myself because I realised that I'm not happy with the car and I can sort it. Finally I feel like we have."

REPORT: Rosberg takes pole as ERS problem hits Hamilton

AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix - Qualifying

Exclusive Valtteri Bottas Q&A

Romain Grosjean column: Haas brought back down to earth

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.