F1 legend acquired fired hours earlier than his greatest ever race – ‘it was an odd weekend’
British Formula 1 legend Jolyon Palmer was told he was sacked and would lose his seat just hours before driving a career-best race.
The West Sussex driver, now 35, raced in F1 between 2016 and 2017 for Renault, after being a reserve driver at Lotus the year before. However, the Enstone team that the Horsham-born racer joined found themselves struggling as one of the back markers.
After starting in karts, Palmer moved up to cars and the T Cars series in 2005. He later went on to join his father – former F1 driver and major UK race circuit owner Jonathan Palmer – at his team Formula Palmer Audi, before joining Formula 2 and eventually making his GP2 Series debut in 2011.
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Palmer won the GP2 Series title in 2014 with DAMS, winning four races and finishing 47 points ahead of future McLaren driver Stoffel Vandoorne. He test-drove for Force India and joined Loftus the following year as a test and reserve driver before being rewarded with a seat by Renault alongside Kevin Magnussen.
But his debut campaign didn’t go to plan as he picked up just one point with a P10 finish in the Malaysian Grand Prix and failed to finish eight of the 21 races. Meanwhile Magnussen finished on seven points.
The following year saw Renault improve to finish 6th in the Constructors’ Championship on 57 points. Magnussen was replaced by Nico Hulkenberg and the German racked up 43 points.
The pressure piled on Palmer, who could only manage a best finish of P11 in the opening 13 races of the season. That was until the F1 calendar rolled into Singapore.
Palmer finished 6th to score his first points of the season and match Hulkenberg’s best result of the year; however, Palmer had already found out that he would be sacked by Renault after the Japanese Grand Prix two race weekends later, to be replaced by Carlos Sainz.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Sport, via Lottoland Live Casino, Palmer recalled his bittersweet weekend. He said: “Getting it over the line was nice, it was a tough race.
“Singapore’s always tricky anyway. It’s hot and humid. It’s like two hours, the longest race of the year. And that one was wet, so it was really tricky.
“It was my best result. I knew I was running in a good place kind of the whole race long, but it’s so easy to make a mistake. Pace was pretty good. I think I was looking at the back of the fourth-place battle for most of it as well. To get the result on the board was brilliant.
“The bad news about that weekend was it was the one I’d been told that I was fired. So it was great to get the result in the bank, but it was already a bit of a strange weekend because I arrived knowing that I was about to lose my seat.
“Just the amount of things that had gone wrong that year for me already, some driving errors, a lot of car failures as well. And it was my first points of the year, it took a long time. To get over the line in probably one of the trickiest races of the year was good.”
Palmer finished P15 and P12 in the following two races in Malaysia and Japan, respectively. Sainz’s move to Renault from Toro Rosso was due to happen at the start of the 2018 season, but the transfer was brought forward. In his first race in the seat, the Spaniard finished 7th in the US but retired from two of the following three races to end the season.
The Briton ended his racing career at just 26 after his axing from Renault and has worked as a pundit and in the media for F1.
