Grading Jolyon Palmer's Start to Life in Formula 1

Having followed in the footsteps of Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean by winning the GP2 championship in 2014, there is little doubt that Jolyon Palmer is deserving of a chance in Formula One.

Unable to find a race seat in the immediate aftermath of his success in F1's official feeder category, the British driver took the next-best option and secured a reserve-driver role at a mid-grid team, participating in a number of free-practice sessions for Lotus in 2015.

When Grosjean ran out of patience with Lotus' financial struggles toward the end of last season and joined the new Haas team, Palmer—having raised a budget of £7 million, per the Telegraph's Daniel Johnson—was in the right place at the right time, activating a contract clause to guarantee his promotion to a full-time seat.

And when Lotus formally became Renault a short time later, this modest 20-something-year-old found himself in one of the most enviable positions in the sport, beginning his F1 career with the might of a full-blown factory team behind him.

Alongside former McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen, who was recruited as a replacement for Pastor Maldonado after complications developed between Renault and the Venezuelan's personal sponsor, Palmer has an ideal team-mate to judge his progress this season.

And after the leading three rookies of 2015—Felipe Nasr, Carlos Sainz Jr. and, in particular, Max Verstappen—set new standards for newcomers in F1, progress is very much required.

In the first of a series of articles assessing all three rookies on the 2016 grid, we have judged Palmer's abilities in the four key areas of modern-day F1 to establish an overall grade for his start to life in the sport.

Palmer has been consistently beaten by Magnussen in qualifying this season and, following the European Grand Prix, trails the Dane 6-2 in the head-to-head battle.

That deficit comes despite the British driver taking an early advantage on his debut weekend in Australia, where he secured what remains Renault's best grid spot of 2016, pipping his team-mate to 14th by a margin of 0.141 seconds.

After that session, Magnussen told the team's official website only traffic had prevented him from setting "a better time" under the messy elimination-style format, and he has outclassed Palmer in one-lap conditions ever since.

Indeed, were it not for his bizarre crash in the closing minutes of final practice in Canada, which ruled him out of qualifying, Magnussen would probably have beaten the other car in each of the last seven qualifying sessions.

The most damning defeat to date came in China, where—on a weekend Magnussen's preparations were severely compromised following a rear-suspension failure on Friday morning—Palmer, spooked by a lack of rear grip, was 0.855 seconds behind.

A similar opportunity appeared in Russia, where newly signed development driver Sergey Sirotkin drove Magnussen's car in first practice, but Palmer still found himself slower than his team-mate, albeit 0.095 seconds adrift.

When the roles were reversed in Spain, as reserve driver Esteban Ocon took to the wheel of the No. 30 car, Palmer—unhelped by a puncture in FP2—was unable to mount a Kevin-esque recovery, settling for 17th while Magnussen claimed the team's second Q2 appearance of the season.

Renault's limited development of the R.S.16 car has undoubtedly hindered both drivers, who—with the exception of Montreal—have qualified within two positions of each other at every event and slumped to a new row at the Baku City Circuit, where they occupied the back row.

But while the pair have been closely positioned on the grid, there appears to be quite a gulf between Palmer and Magnussen over a single lap.

While Magnussen is 15th in the drivers' standings with six points to his name at the time of writing, Palmer is rooted in 19th place, among the six drivers yet to get off the mark.

Down in the dumps alongside the two Sauber and Manor drivers—as well as Esteban Gutierrez, who has struggled upon his return to F1 with newcomers Haas—Palmer's position in the championship is a reflection of the troubles he has faced since arriving on the grid.

His 11th-place finish in Australia remains the closest he has come to scoring points in the opening eight grands prix.

But although he received much credit for his assured debut, that he crossed the line little more than two seconds ahead of Magnussen—who suffered an opening-lap puncture but was faster on the medium-compound tyres fitted to both cars following the red-flag stoppage—provided an early cause for concern.

The momentum of Melbourne almost instantly evaporated when he failed to start in Bahrain due to a hydraulic issue, and it feels as though Palmer has been scrambling to rediscover that form ever since.

In an usual race in China, where all 22 starters made it to the chequered flag, he was the one humiliated to be propping up the rear and left to reflect on his "worst-ever [weekend] as a racing driver," as he told Autosport (h/t Eurosport).

Five positions behind his team-mate in Shanghai, Palmer was six places lower at the Sochi Autodrom, where Magnussen claimed Renault's only points finish to date with seventh place—the Dane driving with the feistiness the man on the side of the garage was unable to replicate.

Palmer steadied the slide with a tactical drive to 13th in Spain. But he threw all that good work away by crashing on the first green-flag lap in Monaco—bringing an end to a weekend when he spent most of his time pointing in the wrong direction—before a water-pressure problem restricted him to just 16 laps in Canada.

Such issues mean Palmer has completed the fewest racing laps of any driver with a full-time seat in 2016, having racked up 302 laps compared to Magnussen's 435, per F1 Fanatic.

Having spent his entire GP2 career with the temperamental Pirelli rubber and participated in no fewer than 14 practice sessions in 2015, tyre management was thought to be the area where the neat-and-tidy Palmer would be most comfortable in his debut campaign.

Especially alongside Magnussen, whose style is littered with "aggressive" inputs and one too many "energy spikes," as esteemed driver coach Rob Wilson told The Racer's Edge YouTube channel in late 2014.

And while that has generally been the case, Palmer—like most drivers in the current era of grand prix racing—has not been without occasional difficulties.

As Renault racing director Frederic Vassuer told the team's official website, that dreadful weekend in China saw both of the manufacturer's cars suffering from extreme degradation.

Palmer struggled to heat up his soft-compound tyres after deciding not to pit during the early safety car period and, as his afternoon became increasingly desperate, even considered switching to a four-stop strategy at one stage.

However, while Magnussen was forced to switch to a three-stopper in Spain, Palmer was able to make it to the finish with just two visits to the pit lane, completing a 32-lap final stint on hard tyres on a day his team-mate rid himself of the orange-striped compound after just 15 laps.

Yet Palmer discovered the true meaning of "looking after the tyres" in the European GP, when a mistake under braking saw him flatspot a set of softs. That error condemned him to a two-stop strategy and 15th place as Magnussen spent 44 laps on a single set of the same compound to recover from a pit-lane start to 14th.

There is, of course, much room for improvement, but it does seem the more complex and strategic the race, the better it is for Palmer in his struggle for inter-team supremacy.

According to F1 Fanatic, Palmer is the fourth-biggest mover on the opening laps of races in 2016, having gained a total of 13 positions at an average of 1.86 per grand prix.

With Pascal Wehrlein, Marcus Ericsson and Jenson Button the only drivers above him, this has much to do with the fact that the only way is up for those at the back of the grid, and chaotic starts in China, Russia and Spain have contributed heavily to such figures.

Yet Palmer has also offered glimpses of the astute racer we saw in GP2, particularly in Australia, where he spent his first racing lap in 18 months wheel-to-wheel with Fernando Alonso before battling Valtteri Bottas and defending calmly under pressure from Sainz and Verstappen.

Much like his qualifying and race pace, however, Palmer has been unable to hit those same heights in recent months. 

And, most worryingly, he appears to have being targeted by other drivers who have felt entitled to bully the No. 30 car out of the way with overly aggressive passing manoeuvres.

Sainz was handed a 10-second time penalty for forcing Palmer off track at Turns 2 and 3 in Russia, before Magnussen incurred the same punishment for causing a collision with his own team-mate on the final lap in Spain.

Behind the wheel of one of 2016's most uncompetitive cars, Palmer must also be judged on his handling of traffic, and he has generally struggled to handle the hassle that comes with blue flags and the demands of adjusting from race-winning contention in GP2 to back-of-the-grid fodder.

Daniil Kvyat was enraged by his reluctance to obey blue flags as the Russian pursued his second F1 podium finish in China, with Palmer running the risk of a penalty in the Spanish GP by initially refusing to move aside for Daniel Ricciardo.

The opportunity of a lifetime has become more reminiscent of a living hell over the course of the opening eight races of 2016, when Palmer and Renault have suffered from a conflict of interest.

While the driver is anxious to prove he is worthy of a place in F1 by claiming instant results, the team—at the beginning of what they hope will be a long and successful return to the pinnacle of motorsport—have taken a far more relaxed, long-term approach.

As technical director Nick Chester told James Allen on F1's Alex Kalinauckas in February, 2016 is little more than a "transition year" as Renault "rebuild the team" and prepare for a significant "step up" when the major regulation changes are implemented next year.

The result has been predictably untidy as Palmer, perhaps placing himself under too much pressure to be part of that future, has done himself more harm than good on occasion—crashing on all three days of running in Monaco, for instance.

Per Motorsport.com's Valentin Khorounzhiy, Palmer has insisted he is not worried about the prospect of being replaced by Ocon on a permanent basis despite the obvious commercial benefits of a French driver racing a French car.

Yet unless he can rediscover the charm of his 2014 GP2 season, it is difficult to regard Palmer as anything more than a short-term fix in a team focusing on the future.

Unless stated, timing and tyre data sourced from the official F1 website, the FOM television feed and emailed Pirelli infographics.

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