Renault Sport
Jolyon Palmer believes Renault had the potential to be substantially quicker during qualifying for the European Grand Prix, as he finished at the back of the field.
Palmer was the slowest of the 22 drivers during the first knockout session at the Baku City Circuit, the seventh successive race in which the rookie has been eliminated at the first hurdle.
However, Palmer reckons more was possible across the course of a lap.
"The potential is there for a huge amount more but it wasn’t to be today," he explained.
"I had a really, really good second run but it had to be aborted due to yellow flags.
"Unfortunately I made a mistake on my final timed lap which lost me about half a second, and I had no tow over the start/finish line which is worth another few tenths. We could have been a lot quicker."
Team-mate Kevin Magnussen was only 21st on a difficult day for Renault.
"The session was pretty straightforward with the simple factor that we’re not fast enough here," he explained.
"In FP3 we realised we didn’t have the relative pace with the car even if it was feeling quite good to drive so we tried something different with the set-up."
