Jolyon Palmer revealed that the Renault Sport F1 team were trying out a big suspension update during the post-British Grand Prix test at Silverstone as they attempt to make their RS16 quicker.
Palmer felt encouraged by his time in the car on Wednesday, having taken over from Sergey Sirotkin for the final day of in-season testing, and completed 98 laps in finishing eighth quickest, 2.644 seconds off the pace set by Kimi Raikkonen.
Palmer is still seeking his first points of 2016 in his rookie campaign, while team-mate Kevin Magnussen has only one top-ten finish to his name as they struggle with their RS16, but Palmer is hopeful they can find some speed from the car in the remaining races this season.
“We have been working on making the car quicker, that’s the main focus!” said Palmer. “We had some big suspension updates that we were trying today, with a change planned during the lunch hour as it was quite a long alteration.
“We also worked on the aerodynamics; it’s quite a busy test programme with a lot of different parts to try.
“The weather was challenging, we needed it to stay dry all day to be able to complete a real back-to-back comparison for the suspension. Thankfully it held most of the day and I felt quite good in the car throughout, which is always encouraging.”
