Hulkenberg's pace should encourage Palmer - Renault

Palmer's difficult season continued in Russia, where he crashed in Q1 and was then eliminated by a first-lap collision with Romain Grosjean.

Meanwhile, Hulkenberg has been a regular top 10 qualifier, and has scored points in the past two events.

Thus far Palmer has not bettered a 13th place on race day.

Abiteboul stressed that the team remains fully committed to the Englishman.

"He needs to see the positives in the fact that Nico is doing so well," Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.

"He needs to feel that he's in a team that has the capacity to deliver this type of performance. And this performance is not just for Nico, we are not a one-man band, and he has to be part of it.

"Fifty per cent of the effort we are putting in is for each driver, so fifty per cent is for Jo. We need Jo to score points, so there is absolutely no doubt in our commitment to him."

Abiteboul says that Palmer's Sochi weekend was spoiled only by his crash in Q1, which came as he tried to make up for time lost with few laps in FP3.

"If you look at his whole weekend he did one mistake, which was his mistake in Q1. He would have been easily in Q2, we could see that in terms of sector times.

"If he had been in Q2 he wouldn't have been in the sort of position where there is always something happening, and something happened in Turn 2.

"Looking at the data it was obvious there was nothing he could have done to avoid that incident. So we left with a lot of frustration for Jo from one single mistake in a very difficult environment for him."

Abiteboul is also keen to motivate Palmer's crew, who had a busy weekend in Russia.

"We feel extremely sorry for the other side of the garage. I should make a special mention for Jo's team.

"We had a number of issues to do on the car, changing chassis, changing engine, the shunt in qualifying. I feel sorry for Jo and the group of people behind him who did a remarkable job over the weekend.

"When you change chassis and change engine you have all the reasons in the world to have problems, but we did not have a single operational problem, so I want to give a huge credit to the guys."