Palmer wants Renault to check car before China

Palmer crashed heavily in Friday’s second free practice session in Melbourne, backing the RS17 into the tyre wall on the exit of the final corner.

He failed to finish the race after reporting an issue with the brakes sticking on, and told Motorsport.com the priority was now to ensure he could start practice in Shanghai on the front foot.

“Obviously I had a big crash on Friday so we’ve changed a lot of parts on the car,” said Palmer. We just need to have a good look and make sure everything is working as it should.

“I trust the guys will do that, they’re experienced and know what they’re doing so I have no worries on my side.

“We just need to have a good look and make sure we’re in a good position to start in China.”

The FP2 crash was part of a difficult opening round for Palmer, who had a gearbox-related problem in first practice and was eliminated in Q1 in qualifying a fuel-surge problem left him with one run on ultra-softs.

That lap was 3.3s slower than team-mate Nico Hulkenberg and the slowest of the session, although Palmer said further analysis on Saturday evening had revealed a couple of problems contributed to the deficit.

“We found there were some aero parts that weren’t a massive problem but they needed touching up and we were losing a few points [of downforce],” he said.

“Also in qualifying we had loads of fuel in the car. You expect it to be 5kg, qualifying spec, and it ends up with loads of fuel because we had a different issue.

“That made the car feel worse then as well.”

Before the brake problem hit in the race, Palmer had rose from 18th – courtesy of a grid penalty for Lance Stroll and a delayed pitlane start for Daniel Ricciardo – to 14th.

He said: “It was much better. The start was good, I think on the softs we struggle compared to the guys on ultra-softs, but still it was looking sensible.

“It was a shame because it would have been good to do the race distance and see how we ended up, and also it would have been good to have more mileage.”

“Those laps, that was my personal best [for consecutive laps on track in 2017] across a race weekend and four test days.”