By alley - Jul 28, 2017, 1:05 PM ET

Palmer mystified by Friday crash

Renault's Jolyon Palmer is at a loss to explain a troubled opening to the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, which included a broken front wing and a heavy crash into the barriers.

Needing a clean weekend in the wake of fresh rumors that Robert Kubica could be replacing him after the summer break, Palmer started the first practice session on the right foot and set a time good enough to finish 10th-fastest.

However, during second practice, the Briton lost control of his Renault through the long final corner and spun into the barriers, causing heavy damage to the rear of his car.

"Honestly, it felt like something broke," said Palmer. "I think they are looking at it at the moment because it just snapped and I had zero chance to catch it. Something wasn't working since the beginning of the session; we don't know what. It was looking to do that many times and we couldn't see what [was wrong], but it just like rallycross out there."

To make matters worse for the

under-pressure

26-year-old, an excursion off the track in opening practice at the fast Turn 4 section resulted in his ripping the front wing off his car after running over the tough kerbing on the exit of the corner.

"It is a quick corner, blind when you are approaching, and I just went in a bit hard and run wide," he said. "It was a bit of a shock to cause that much damage and it is a shame, because in FP1 I was really happy with the car.

"[There is] a little bit on the right-hand side when the front-wing came off, just ran over it a little bit on the floor, did the front-right tire and the right side. It's a very big penalty for a metre of track."

Luckily for Palmer, his morning incident resulted in the team reverting his upgraded floor back to the old one, so his heavy crash in the second practice session didn't affect the update brought this weekend by Renault.