Renault's Montreal struggles down to poor kerb riding, say drivers

After a difficult first practice session in Montreal where they were 20th and 22nd on the timesheets, Magnussen and Palmer made a bit of progress in second practice.

However, both conceded that how the car behaved over the kerbs was their chief issue.

Palmer, who was 20th fastest in the afternoon, said: “It was difficult. I think our biggest problem is kerb riding, which is quite important around here.

“We split the set-up a bit on the two cars and we tried to piece together the data to see what is better for tomorrow. It is not easy, but on the timesheets I am confident I can be higher than that.”

Magnussen added: “It was quite similar to Monaco. Hitting the kerbs is never good in an F1 car but it is the landing that can be good or bad. And we are struggling a little bit at the moment.

“At this track you take kerbs nearly every corner, so it is important to have good ride stability and we don't have that at the moment.”

When asked if it was a fundamental car problem or something that could be dialled out with set-up changes, Magnussen said: “It is probably fairly difficult to fix completely. We need to try.”

Q2 target

Although being far from happy with things, both men think that Q2 can be a target – especially with improvements to the engine.

Asked if Q2 was possible, Magnussen said: “I think so. In P2 it looks like [Romain] Grosjean is the next guy, and then there is a big step to the next group, which is a very close group.

“It is a shame we are not in there, as it would be fun in that group because, with a couple of tenths, you move up a lot. But that is not where we are at at the moment.”

Palmer was confident there was more performance to come from the new Renault power unit too.

“It is clearly more powerful and a good step,” he said. “We've got more to come tomorrow, as today we were quite conservative. We didn't do a lot of laps with it.”