New floor solves Palmer's handling troubles

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."