BBC F1 broadcaster Jolyon Palmer has revealed how a ‘freak’ component supplied to Renault resulted in additional damage to his driving career.

Palmer, the 2014 GP2 Champion, secured a race seat with Renault in 2016 but was dropped midway through the 2017 season.

Jolyon Palmer opens up on Renault exit as Australian GP sets the tone

Palmer had served as the test and reserve driver at Lotus in 2015 following his championship victory in GP2 (now Formula 2), and secured a promotion for 2016.

Teamed with Kevin Magnussen, Palmer had a nondescript season in what proved to be a nondescript year for Renault upon its return to the sport after buying Lotus – the team has since been rebranded as Alpine.

The British driver was outscored by Magnussen, but Palmer compared solidly against the more experienced Danish driver – Magnussen’s seventh place in Russia being the biggest points differentiator between the two as he scored seven of Renault’s eight points.

With Magnussen leaving for Haas after that season, Palmer was paired with Nico Hulkenberg and his season started immediately under a cloud as he described to the Beyond The Grid podcast.

“I crashed in Melbourne in FP2,” he said.

“We rock up – me and Nico had been really closely matched in pre-season testing. We’d been competitive.

“In Melbourne FP1, my car had an issue, I can’t remember what, something went wrong with it in the first couple of laps, and didn’t get any running.

“In FP2, I was trying to make up for it. On the second or third flying lap, I made a mistake, and I dropped it in the barriers at the final corner, pushing too hard, too soon. It was not a great moment. It meant that the whole Friday was pretty bad.

“But the bigger thing was my car was rebuilt incorrectly. So, when I then turned up on Saturday, the rear anti-roll bar had been installed the wrong way around. Basically, it meant I had a disconnected rear bar, and the car was just lolling all around the place.

“I just couldn’t drive it for the rest of the weekend. I was saying, I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve driven this in preseason. Even my one and three-quarter laps in FP2, I felt connected to the car. I felt like I could press on before I dropped it.

“Suddenly, I just couldn’t drive the thing. I was understeering, oversteering, it was horrible.

“To compound matters, I then couldn’t run low fuel in qualifying because we had a fuel pickup issue, so I qualified with 30 kilos of fuel on board. I qualified last by miles, and it set the tone for a bit of a negative spiral at the start of the year.”

Palmer outlined how he felt that, despite his protestations, the team felt he was the problem, rather than there being a technical issue.

“It was a really horrible way to start the year,” he said.

“I sat down on Sunday morning with Alain Prost [Renault advisor] and Cyril [Abiteboul, Renault managing director], and they were saying, ‘Ah, you need to just build the confidence again. You’ve had a crash on Friday. I understand that you’re missing confidence, and this is where things are’.

“I was like, ‘No, guys, the car doesn’t feel right. I’m telling you, I’ve driven this thing. I know how to drive a Formula 1 car. Something is wrong’.

“But they were looking at the numbers, they couldn’t see it. I know something’s up here. Anyway, in the race, the latest mechanical [issue] ruled me out after about 10 laps. Honestly, it was such a tough weekend.

“So my engineer calls and says there’s good news and bad news. The good news is we found what was wrong with the car. The rear bar was installed incorrectly. I don’t know how we didn’t spot it. The bad news is that’s on us, and we’ll try and make amends.

“It just set a really negative tone for the season.”

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‘Freak part’ wreaks havoc as social media abuse escalates

With Nico Hulkenberg showing a clean pair of heels to Palmer as he racked up 34 points to Palmer’s zero by the Italian Grand Prix, the British driver’s career was clearly in trouble – although a moment of respite came when he finished sixth at the Singapore Grand Prix to score his only points of the year, shortly before he lost his drive and the curtain came down on his racing career.

While Palmer holds his hands up that Hulkenberg was the superior driver anyway, he pointed to how an errant fuel flow meter skewed things in the German driver’s favour.

“There was another big thing that was really the bigger thing for me in Renault, which was a fuel flow meter. It’s a really kind of insignificant part of a car, and it’s a part that the FIA distributes,” Palmer said.

The FIA regulations dictated that all fuel flow meters would be manufactured by a single supplier, and distributed by the FIA. When Renault found itself with a component performing beyond expectations, it didn’t rush off to the governing body to tattle on itself.

“They’re all within a certain tolerance, and that basically controls how much fuel you can use, and how much, effectively, power you have in the car,” Palmer said.

“Renault, at the start of the season, got one that was exceptionally good, and one that was normal. The one that was exceptionally good went to the driver that they had signed for big money, and, understandably, would be the stronger driver, which was Nico.

“It just meant that on power-sensitive tracks, he had quite a big advantage. I measured it up towards half a second a lap, and he was just flying on the straights.

“What was harder is there was nothing I could do or say, because this was a part that eventually was taken away from Nico because it was too good.

“But, if I mentioned anything before, then the FIA would take it away. It would be terrible for Renault, and I would be the fault for it.

“So the comparison was always really tricky in the first half. Eventually, it did get taken away, because the FIA saw that it was too good at the summer break. The second part of the year, we were on an even keel. They were two things that made life very tricky.

“I have to say Nico was a rapid driver. So, even on an even keel, he was going to be really tough to beat.”

Asked whether he had sought to get a new fuel flow meter, Palmer said the particular one Hulkenberg was using was a very obvious outlier in their pool of parts.

“We had some in the pool. So we had a few in the pool, but we just had a freak one that was so good,” he said.

“I remember we had the same engine, the same power unit, as Red Bull, who were using the Renault and there were quotes from them saying they didn’t know what was going on, ‘We’re not getting even treatment with Renault, because Hulkenberg is way quicker than us on the straights’.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I know why, but I can’t say anything’, because all that will happen is my teammate will go way slower, and it won’t help anyone.

“It’s tricky, because you’re always compared to your teammate. So, inevitably, I would be out-qualified.

“Honestly, I would have been out-qualified anyway. If you look at the stats, Nico was super quick. He was a faster driver than me, but it exacerbated the difference between us.”

With his confidence spiraling, Palmer admitted that it was affecting his enjoyment of racing.

“Then you start answering questions about why I’m struggling so much, and it just becomes a really difficult situation,” he said.

“You’ve got a really fast driver. I’m trying my best against him. I’ve got a deficit naturally in the car.

“When we were bringing upgrades, they would go to Nico first as well. I understand so much of it from Renault’s point of view, but it was such a difficult position to be in from the other side of the garage. So, inevitably, the confidence took a hit, and I just wasn’t fighting on an even keel.

“I lost my enjoyment of racing as a result at the end of all of this. I loved 2016 and my dream was to race in Formula 1. The enjoyment, in the end, from being such a high hope in 2017, it just really faded quickly.

“I still enjoyed the cut and thrust of racing. I still gave it absolutely everything to try and score some points.

“But, just turning up every week and facing loads of questions – Robert Kubica was starting to test the Renault – in the end, I didn’t see out the season. It takes a mental toll.”

Added to that was the constant mocking and serious berating from toxic members of the F1 fandom, with Palmer ending up deleting his social media as it proved relentless.

“I was getting a lot of abuse on social media at the time as well, which is part and parcel of being an athlete,” he said.

“It’s difficult for anyone to ignore it. I hate social media with a passion because, so many times, it is used in such a negative way. It’s people that I don’t know why they choose to voice these opinions.

“I finished 11th, and I had a run of 11th-place finishes, and I was very close to the points. I didn’t make it, but you look on social media, and some of the vitriol that was on there was just unimaginable.

“So in the end, I’d had enough of it, but I do think it’s a tough world – not just Formula 1, but in any walk of life.”

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