Jolyon Palmer betrayed by his mechanics at Spa-Francorchamps
In retreat since the start of the season, Jolyon Palmer was having a very strong weekend until his mechanics stopped in Q3. Nico Hülkenberg was once again the best of the rest, finishing 7th.
Jolyon Palmer knows full well that his place at Renault is not secured for next season and that he needs to raise his game if he wants to stay at Enstone. It must be acknowledged that this has been the case since the start of this Belgian weekend. The Briton was even able to outperform his teammate during Q1 and Q2.
Unfortunately for him, bad luck struck again when he had to abandon his car at the side of the track at the start of Q3. While it seems that it was an oil pressure loss on his gearbox, the team was still analyzing the issue, as confirmed by Alan Permane, the team’s technical director: “We are still investigating what went wrong with the gearbox. It’s really unfortunate for Jolyon: without this incident, he could have started from a comfortable seventh position. He has been very competitive since the beginning of the weekend and it’s truly a shame that he wasn’t able to show his full potential today. It’s not his fault at all.”
The driver could only regret not being able to defend his chances until the end and therefore concede for the 12th time to his teammate in the qualifying exercise, but he is mainly encouraged by his resurgence: « I am in the game with the R.S.17 since the beginning of the weekend; this is my best performance of the year. I have great confidence in the car, I feel it really has a good balance and we didn’t have to make major changes. This bodes well for the future. We had a gearbox issue in Q3, after another minor clutch sensor problem. »
Once again, Nico Hülkenberg demonstrated how fast he is over a single lap by climbing to 7th position, the best behind the top three: « I’m very happy with this qualification because I hadn’t managed to get the setup I wanted. However, I succeeded in securing this seventh place. We continued working on the settings today without me managing to find the desired configuration. I still think we haven’t found the best solution, and I was pleasantly surprised to snatch the seventh place. It was a team effort. »
The German will hope to perform the same as at Silverstone and not fall back in the hierarchy as the race goes on, as was the case on several occasions at the beginning of the season.
From our special correspondent at Spa-Francorchamps
