Jolyon Palmer was left disappointed after seeing his first British Grand Prix unravel before retiring with a suspected gearbox issue on his RS16.
The British driver was happy with the opening stint of the race, getting ahead of his Renault Sport F1 team-mate Kevin Magnussen before it all went wrong in his second pit stop to switch from Intermediate to slick tyres when his team released him before his right rear tyre was fitted properly, which earned him a ten-second stop and go penalty that saw him fall to the back of the field.
Two laps down, Palmer headed back into the pits after feeling that there was a strange feeling with his gearbox, ending his afternoon after 38 laps.
“Today wasn’t the result I wanted for my home race,” said Palmer. “It was going reasonably well on the wet tyres at the beginning of the race and then we did a good stop for the intermediate tyres.
“Things were looking up: I got ahead of Kevin and I was catching Romain Grosjean. When I pitted for slick tyres, I had a green light to go but the rear right wasn’t finished and I’d already started to leave the box.
“From then on I lost about a minute and then received a 10 seconds penalty for unsafe release. What happened was unfortunate but it could happen to anyone up and down the pit lane.
“We retired the car as there was a strange feeling with the gearbox, more as a precaution as at that stage we were two laps down. We’ll now investigate the problem thoroughly.”
