Under-pressure Briton Jolyon Palmer is hoping to rebound from his Baku nightmare, as Renault bring fixes for their ongoing power unit problems to the Austrian Grand Prix.
The former GP2 champion had a miserable weekend in Azerbaijan, crashing at Turn 8 on Friday before a fuel leak left the 26-year-old unable to take part in qualifying, then a misfire forced him to retire from the race on Sunday.
With growing speculation surrounding his future with the French manufacturer, albeit an increasing likelihood he will see out the rest of 2017, past form at the Red Bull Ring is giving Palmer reason for optimism.
“We will make sure we have a better one in Austria, the target is always the same: to bring home some points,” he said.
“We started on the penultimate row last year but I managed to work my way up to 12th, beating my team-mate. I was quite happy with the race, we just needed a little bit of extra luck and I think we could have been in the points.
“It is a circuit I enjoy having raced there in GP2 in 2014 and then a Free Practice session in 2015. It was definitely one of my strongest races of last season, so it is important to build on the knowledge we have and my confidence at the track and work towards a positive result.
“We need to change our luck. I hope we can make it all stick heading into the final few rounds before the summer break – beginning here.”
Palmer was not the only driver hit by poor Renault reliability as team-mate Nico Hulkenberg had an issue in qualifying, while Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen both retired with mechanical issues too.
Engine chief Remi Raffin has now claimed his team at Viry-Chatillon in France have come up with solutions that will be introduced in Austria.
“What is clear is that we did have reliability issues on track,” he conceded reflecting on the weekend in Baku.
“Issues which we immediately addressed, but this should not detract from the clear progress which has been made.
“We have put in place new and better procedures to catch any issues before the cars take to the track and we’re working with great diligence in this area.
“For our customer teams, we saw a coincidence of issues. The Energy Store issue we have seen has been addressed and the new Energy Stores are to a different specification without this concern.
“With the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), the latest specification addresses the problems we’ve seen to date. In Austria, we have the latest versions of components and we should not see any repeats of previous woes.”
