MELBOURNE, Australia -- Jolyon Palmer insists he has lost no confidence in his Renault despite crashing out unexpectedly of free practice two in Australia.
Palmer brought out the red flags midway through the session after spinning into the barriers on the exit of the final corner. The car suffered some severe rear damage and was forced to be towed back to the pitlane on the flatbed truck.
Despite the accident, Palmer remains optimistic ahead of 2017's season-opening race.
"I have got confidence in the car still," Palmer said. "I am just frustrated because it puts me on the back foot for tomorrow. I just need to do some more laps.
"Barcelona testing was all fine and I was getting a lot of confidence in the car and the few laps I had before I was feeling good."
Had he not suffered the issue, Palmer believes he would have finished the day far higher up the timesheets. As it were, the Briton finished just shy of four seconds off Lewis Hamilton's blistering early pace, while only managing to clock up 10 laps for the day - the fewest of any driver.
"I was on a tidy lap and attacking the last corner I did not think too much of it. I just turned it in, had a bit of understeer and then the car just completely let go in the rear. It caught me massively by surprise, really.
"I felt really comfortable in the car and I felt we were in a good place. That is why I felt the confidence to go and attack straight away and the lap I was doing was going to be pretty sensible on the timing sheets."
Even with the limited practice Palmer still expects to be ready to go for qualifying on Saturday afternoon.
"It is going to be tough tomorrow and I am going to have to have a really good P3, but I think I can recover.
"It is very close with everyone [at the moment]. It is not going to be a two-by-two because the pace of the cars are so close it could be one driver in Q3 and one out in Q1. It's going to come down to small margins."
Technical Director at Renault, Nick Chester is also confident in the team rebuilding Palmer's car ahead of free practice three on Saturday.
"There's a reasonable amount of work to do to [Jolyon's] car but nothing too drastic, so we're looking forward to seeing what's possible in our first qualifying session of the season tomorrow."