Jolyon Palmer finished in 22nd and last place at the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix, in what was a tough race for the Brit and the Renault Sport F1 team at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday.
Palmer is still optimistic however, going into the next round of the 2016 Formula One World Championship in Russia.
“The start was good today, as was the first lap – we made up a lot of positions. From then on though, it was a tough day.
“The balance of the car was all over the place, tyre degradation was bigger than usual and the pace wasn’t as good as previous races.
“We need to look in the data really, and I’m definitely happy to move on to the next race.”
Team-mate Kevin Magnussen finished slightly higher up the order in seventeenth place, but was not happy with his weekend as a whole. The Dane was quick to point out however, that the team were all well aware that the first few races would be tough going, and he was not yet worried with the way things were currently progressing.
“It was a pretty steady race for me really. I had a decent start and then I didn’t actually have much action; just passing people on strategy so no one was really fighting hard.
“This isn’t a weekend that we will be very happy about but it’s definitely one that we can learn from.
“There’s a lot we still don’t really understand so once we do, we’ll be a stronger team. We knew it was going to be a tough start, we’re not panicking.”
Tyre degradation appears to be a big issue for the Renault Sport F1 squad right now, who are back in F1 as a full works team this season, for the first time since 2009. If their engineers can get to the bottom of those problems, it will hopefully allow them to release further performance potential from the RS-16 going forward.
