Under pressure Jolyon Palmer sounds very tetchy in this BBC interview
The Renault driver is having a difficult season at Renault
Jolyon Palmer is having a tough season at Renault as he struggles to match the pace of team-mate Nico Hulkenberg and contend with a host of mechanical issues that have meant he has scored no points to Hulkenberg's 18 so far in 2017.
Renault chiefs have begun to speak publicly about the need for Palmer to improve as rumours swirl that he will be replaced for next season.
It's not surprising in this context that he might be getting a bit fed up with having to answer questions about how badly his season his going - and it certainly sounded like it in this interview with the BBC's Jennie Gow:
Full transcript
Jennie Gow: "When it comes to your season, how do you reflect on it so far?"
Joly Palmer: “It’s not been very good.” (Pause)
JG: "What do you think are the problems? What do you think’s been letting you down?"
JP: (Pause) "It’s tough to say, I mean, you tell me. What’s letting me down? I think qualifying pace and then we start on the back foot in the race." (Pause)
JG: "It’s obviously a difficult time for you, how do you manage that? How do you come back each weekend to feel positive and remain in a good place?"
JP: "By avoiding these little BBC interviews probably.
"It’s not a great place to start turning up on a Thursday and people come and they say ‘you’re doing so poorly, how are you going to turn it around? What are you going to do?’
"You know, every weekend I turn up with the same attitude. It’s a fresh weekend. Anything can happen here.
"So you go through, you do the track walk, you work with the engineers and it’s a fresh start. So for me it’s the same.
"It’s just a shame to have to keep having to answer all these questions."
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Comments (7)
Bring Kubica back !
Just bin'd his car in practice 😕
He is right though, it is a shame to have to answer those questions every weekend.
Is it too much to expect a different attitude from journalists with regards to how drivers feel going into the weekends? it's clearly the same "fresh start" for each driver as the sentiment is always repeated up and down the grid (even by McLaren) and anything could happen.
Think Renault need to up their game as well to be fair. How many times have they sent him out in a sub standard car, the first race of the season and he crashed but the team then sent him into the race with a damaged chassis.
In F1 you win or loose as a team, also Hulkenberg gets all the new parts first and hasn't had to give up his car in FP1 so in some of the weekends he's been on the back foot as of the Friday morning. Get off the guys case and let him get on with the job
He will have a nice career in sportscars...He's so mentally toasted now that nothing can keep him in F1.