RenaultF1 is almost at their wits end with Jolyon Palmer, who has yet to score a single point for the French based squad this season, his best results being two 11th placed finishes in the previous two rounds, Monaco and Montreal. This is in complete contrast to his teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, who has finished in the top ten four times so far, scoring all of the team's 18 points on his own.

According to team boss Cyril Abiteboul, the young Brit has to start delivering the goods if he wants to get his contract for 2018 renewed…

"No one is safe in F1, “ he told Motorsport.com. "F1 is not an environment where anyone can say loudly, 'I'm safe'. To a certain degree there are two questions. There is Jo, and there is a second driver. Right now my focus is on Jo. Jo has to deliver. What would happen then, I don't want to elaborate on that, and even further, who would be stepping in, because that's absolutely not the point for today. The fact is that Jo has a car which is a point-scoring car, and he has to enter into the points. Full stop."

Like a lot of current situations in the sport, the mid-season break seems to be the cut off point for improvements, especially seeing as they have given him  a car that is capable of getting points finishes, as Hulkenberg has already proven…

"Right now I feel that it's a bit almost unfair to Nico, who has to do a lot. The team is clearly very dependent on him. You could see that in Monaco. When Nico is out of the game, including for reasons beyond his control like when he had his gearbox failure, we struggle to finish in the points, despite a number of cars that were also not finishing the race. It's a challenge. We see that there is a very substantial gap between Nico and Jo in qualifying, and in the race. We are discussing on a regular basis obviously with Jo to see how he can improve."

"The first thing we had to do was deliver him a weekend that was a clean weekend, and we did that in Monaco. It was the first time in a while that we'd done that, and for me that weekend was almost a restart for the season for the relationship between Jo and the team, that is finally providing him the right platform in order for him to improve his game, and hopefully eventually to deliver. That process has to lead to a position where Jo will also make a contribution to the championship."