Renault drivers Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Palmer had mixed feelings after qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix.
Magnussen struggled to get his tyre temperatures balanced, leading him to qualify seventeenth with a time of 1:38.914.
“It wasn’t a brilliant qualifying lap from me and we struggled to get the tyres into their correct operating window, so not a perfect set-up for the car either.
“Qualifying proved to be more of a challenge [than FP3]. There was more possible from the car if we’d been able to find that sweet spot.”
Despite losing out to his teammate in qualifying by just under one tenth of a second, Palmer (who qualified 18th after setting a lap time of 1:39.009) was upbeat about his chances in the race tomorrow.
“Today the car has been really good.”
“I think we’ve found the problem that’s been hurting me the last couple of Grands Prix. We’ve changed something and it’s working well so it’s good to be back on track!
“We’re not super quick as a team but I’m happy with the car and I think we can look forward to a good race tomorrow. Our race pace tends to be better than in qualifying; we should be able to move forward quite quickly, we’ll definitely aim to challenge the guys in front of us and take any opportunity on offer.”
Palmer seems confident ahead of the race, but he and Magnussen will have a lot of work to do if they are to score the team’s first points of the year tomorrow.
