Palmer: 'F1 pretty much what I thought it would be'

As he assesses a difficult maiden season in Formula 1, having to deal with learning his trade in the environment of a team which has yet to become fully competitive, Jolyon Palmer believes his job as a Grand Prix driver is pretty much what he expected it would be.

As the son of former F1 driver Jonathan Palmer, the Renault driver's DNA set him on a predictable course in life, having progressed through the junior ranks to reach the pinnacle of motorsport.

"It is a dream come and always what I wanted to do," Palmer said in an interview with Sky Sports.

"It's the fastest cars in the world, there are loads of fans everywhere we go, and racing in GP2 obviously all the fans are there, but now the spotlight is on us in Formula 1, so that's the difference.

"And the competition of course is very tough, with the best drivers in the  world, but I wouldn't have it any other way."

As Renault comes to grips with its renewed presence as a works effort in F1 following its purchase of Lotus at the end of last year, the French manufacturer is still a work in progress with Palmer - a former Lotus driver - contributing as much as he can to the team's development.

"There have been a lot of changes. Performance wise we are behind where we were with Lotus last year but generally, there is huge motivation to move forward.

"There's a lot of energy around the factories and commitment from everyone. And we've got resources now which makes everyone happy."

As a fully-fledged works F1 driver Palmer admitted that his biggest difficulty this season has been to simply put all the pieces properly together during a Grand Prix weekend.

"What I struggled with, especially early on in the season, was putting a race weekend together. We ended up always arriving into to qualifying or the race on the back foot because of waste of a free practice session here or there, or a puncture or something...

"When everything is taken care of before you reach qualifying, the race pretty much takes care of itself."

Despite the difficulties, the Brit underlined the push Renault is making for the future and the hopes his has of still racing a yellow car next season, although his priorities are still firmly set on the current season.

"There are high hopes for the future. But we are still trying to improve this year as well. It was always going to be tough, but back at the factory it's not all for 2017 as there are hopes to improve the car this year.

"If we can find  a little bit of performance I think we can start to make Q2, and then from Q2 it's much more possible to see some points."

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