Jolyon Palmer enjoyed a busy afternoon practice session at Hockenheim today (29 July), getting plenty of laps under his belt behind the wheel of Renault Sport Formula One Team’s R.S.16 and predicting more pace to come.
Having sat out the morning as the squad’s reserve driver Esteban Ocon took to the track in his place, Jolyon had a full programme planned for FP2 in the afternoon. The young British F1 rookie duly completed 47 laps – the equal-most of the session – as he evaluated Pirelli’s soft and super-soft compound tyres as part of an extensive long run. He will return to the track at 11:00 tomorrow (Saturday) for the final practice session.
Jolyon Palmer, #30, R.S.16-04
Free practice 2: P20, 1:18.313, 47 laps
Jolyon said: “This morning was pretty easy for me as I wasn’t in the car, so this afternoon was pretty full. We ran a good number of laps – the joint-highest tally of the session – but it’s fair to say we still have some improvements to be made with the car. The good thing is we have a lot of data and as we saw in Budapest, it is possible to unlock quite a bit more pace.”
Bob Bell, Renault Sport Formula One Team Chief Technical Officer added: “A good day’s work. We completed a promising programme with plenty of laps. We finished pretty much all of our planned assessments, which means we have all the information we require to make an educated decision on the direction to take for qualifying tomorrow and the race on Sunday.”
“We have a lot of data and as we saw in Budapest, it is possible to unlock quite a bit more pace.” Jolyon Palmer, Renault Sport Formula One Team Driver