After an odd weekend for Renault Sport Formula 1 Team‘s Jolyon Palmer, which included finding out he’d lost his seat next year via the Internet, the Brit scored his highest points finish to date at today’s Singapore Grand Prix.
It was announced on Friday that Scuderia Toro Rosso‘s Carlos Sainz Jr. will be joining the Renault team next season, at present leaving Palmer without a seat. If anything, this only seemed to spur Palmer on, in what is arguably his strongest performance to date.
Palmer finished the race in sixth, having run as high as second at one point, albeit without having pitted. He, like many of the other drivers, benefitted from the high attrition rate in the race, with Max Verstappen, Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg retiring and gifting him places.
But, Palmer displayed some encouraging pace throughout the race, and after the first Safety Car restart was able to overtake the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team car of Valterri Bottas and maintain that position for several laps.
Palmer had only scored one point in his Formula One career up until this point at last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix, but his sixth-place finish means that he now has a total of eight points this season.
“I’m so happy, it’s been a long time coming but today everything fell into place,” he commented.
“It was a tricky race with the drama at the start and the heavy rain but the circumstances put us in a good place to score some points. We had a good strategy, good pit stops and the car was good in the wet conditions. The next race should be even better.”
