Palmer: I'm not worried about my future

The Briton has had a difficult start to his 2017 season, having failed to score a point so far this year, and matters were not helped by an engine fire in practice in Baku that left him unable to qualify.

But despite Renault being clear that Palmer needs to lift his game, the former GP2 champion says he knows exactly what steps are required and that he is not doing a good enough job right now.

"It's a team sport and it's up to me, with the support and the help of the team and the engineers and everything to try and get through this," explained Palmer.

"I'm sure that I can. It's just a lot of things not going my way including at Baku. But I still think there were two more positive results in the last two grands prix, and this one was looking better through to FP2 (when he crashed).

"It's just been circumstance and a bit of me needing to improve myself, which I put my hands up to.

"But I feel okay. The stories keep coming from everywhere. I don't know where, I don't know how, but I'm not worried. I'm mainly just focused on each weekend as it comes, keep improving and let the results try and speak for themselves in the end."

Hulkenberg at 'another level'

Palmer singles out his qualifying performances as the area that he needs to improve the most, and says that things have not been helped by teammate Nico Hulkenberg being so fast on Saturdays.

Asked what element of his weekend he felt needed a boost, he said: "Mainly I would say qualifying, which has been weak.

"I think Nico to be fair has been extremely strong and he's delivering, not making mistakes on his qualifying laps ever and I'm making small mistakes here and there.

"He's very consistent and doing a good job. That's the level I need to reach, I'm pushing to do it, it's obviously to be consistent, and to be quicker as well. If I can qualify higher then the race pace is easily competitive enough to be in the top 10.

"Once you start further down, then the race pace becomes a lot harder. For example, in Montreal I spent the whole race behind Grosjean. If I was ahead of him, then I think I would have scored points as well. That's a legacy of qualifying."

He also believes that the changes to the 2017 cars had not suited him particularly well, so he was having to adapt his style a bit.

"The cars have changed a lot since last year so the driving style of it is pretty different," he said. "With Kev [Magnussen in 2016], he was also doing a great job especially earlier in the season, but I matched him. And then in the end was quicker in the last third of the year.

"Nico at the moment is just doing a super consistent job and he's achieving I hope the maximum from the car all the time and he's not making mistakes. I would say at the moment he's another level on and it's something I need to dig deep in myself.

"And also to understand this car better because the way I'm driving it is not working with this car at the moment very well."