Recently released post race statements from the RenaultSport F1 team, Cyril Abiteboul, Managing Director Renault has said that “the priority is for Jolyon to qualify higher” he added:

“We had a good race today in Montreal, the results were positive and we’re happy to be resuming our series of points finishes after a frustrating retirement in Monaco. Today’s race allowed us to reduce the deficit between us and Williams, as we are aiming for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship before the mid-season break. Nico had a good race, with a very strong pace, finishing on the lead lap. He was able to stay focused and remain unaffected by the mayhem and penalties around him. Jo had a similar strategy and he now has two P11 finishes in a row. The priority moving forward is for him to qualify higher in order to get a shot at winning some points and contribute to the team’s effort to gain ground in the Constructors’ Championship.”

Hulk is having to lead the charge

The results from Canada has placed Renault Sport F1 into 7th place in the constructors title, with 18 points but Abiteboul’s post race comments were quite clear that Palmer is expected to be matching Hulks netted points. If he had then they would be currently chasing down Force India for 5th, which could make tens of millions pounds of difference in FOM payments next year.

Nico Hülkenberg, who qualified in P10 managed a P8 finish (helped by some DNFs ALO, KVY, MAS, SAI) but nevertheless, scoring 4 valuable points single handedly place Renault 11th in the championship so far. Nico commented:

“Today’s race was quite positive for us overall; everything was running pretty smoothly although the wind was crazy at times; blowing the car from left to right on the straight! I found myself in eighth place and four nice points isn’t bad given this was a track where we were a bit worried on how good we were going to be.”

Jolyon Palmer, improved 4 places to finish just out of the points (again) in P11 from his P15 start, The result continuing his form of failing to score and leaving all the work to his team mate. So far Jolyon is the only driver outside Mclaren and Sauber to fail to score a single point.

Palmer commented:

“We finished in P11 again today, two races in a row within touching distance of points. This is very frustrating, I lost a lot at the start with the mayhem, I lost positions then got stuck behind Grosjean for about 60 laps and couldn’t get close enough to attack him. I think the pace was a bit better and if I could have started a couple of places higher, we could have gotten into the points. The race was much better again, Q2 this weekend was positive, we just need to keep working hard.”

I assume he was using the royal ‘we’

Renault Sport F1 Team will be celebrating 40 years in the sport and will taking Palmer to the Goodwood Festival of Speed festivities in 2017, along with reserve driver Sergey Sirotkin. Keep your eye out for him, they might try to leave him there. Oh apparently Rosberg will be there too.

~SteveBarbyF1