Renault ERS problem worse than expected - Palmer

Jolyon Palmer believes Renault's ERS problem turned out to be worse than expected when the engine manufacturer hit the track during pre-season testing.

Renault had noticed a potential ERS weakness on the dyno ahead of the start of testing and ran the power unit in a detuned state to compensate at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but was still hit by a number of issues across the three cars it powers. With only McLaren below Red Bull, Renault and Toro Rosso, the problem clearly affected track running and Palmer says it had a bigger impact than had been hoped.

"It was flagged up on the dyno," Palmer said. "It's magnified a little bit on track. It's just you get an idea on the dyno, they obviously run it a lot over the winter. It's a completely new design of engine. When you hit the track, different things can happen and it appears to be a little bit worse."

Asked by RACER if it was always the plan to try and implement a fix in Melbourne or if Renault had hoped to rectify the problem during testing, Palmer replied: "We were hoping the problem would not be too bad – we'd maybe have a couple of issues but overall OK. It's been a bit worse than we thought. And we hoped we could sort of dial it out and keep improving the reliability side. It's not been as easy as we hoped on that front."

However, Palmer says the fact Renault was aware of the weakness early in the winter leaves him confident there will be no concerns once track running gets underway in Australia.

"We've had solutions already since before then, so that's why I think we're confident for Melbourne. Obviously there's not a lot of time between now and Melbourne because we knew about some issues on. We managed to get some fixes in. I think we'll be OK."

Although the FIA's homologation deadline for the 2017 season has now passed, power unit manufacturers can re-homologate their designs before Melbourne without penalty following the removal of the token system.