Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul has hinted at an August deadline for Jolyon Palmer to start scoring points as his future becomes increasingly uncertain.
The Briton has yet to score a point this season, with a best of 11th at the last two races and has only managed to exit Q1 once so far while team-mate Nico Hulkenberg has reached Q3 on four occasions.
Recent tests for Russian driver Sergey Sirotkin and Robert Kubica’s first outing in an F1 car since 2011 last week have also called into question Palmer’s position at the team.
“F1 is not an environment where anyone can say loudly, ‘I’m safe’,” Abiteboul admitted when replying to questions about the 26-year-old in Montreal.
“To a certain degree, there are two questions. There is Jo, and there is a second driver. Right now my focus is on Jo. Jo has to deliver.
“What would happen then, I don’t want to elaborate on that, and even further, who would be stepping in, because that’s absolutely not the point for today.
“The fact is that Jo has a car which is a point-scoring car and he has to enter into the points. Full stop,” he insisted.
One reason for the patience shown by Renault has been the difficulties Palmer had in the early races, but now that grace period appears to have ended with the team concerned too much emphasis is being put on Hulkenberg to move the team forwards.
“The first thing we had to do was deliver him a weekend that was a clean weekend, and we did that in Monaco,” Abiteboul explained.
“It was the first time in a while that we’d done that and for me, that weekend was almost a restart for the season for the relationship between Jo and the team. That is to finally provide him with the right platform in order for him to improve his game and hopefully, eventually to deliver.”
Though not an official deadline for Palmer to meet the expectations of his boss, the next four races do appear to be crucial with Abiteboul adding: “I would hope that by the summer break I would be able to leave on holiday in sixth position in the championship.”
Currently, Renault sits seventh in the Constructors’ standings, four points behind Williams and seven points behind Toro Rosso in fifth.