Derek Palmer Jr happy with team’s progress in “emotional” Infiniti debut

The Infiniti Support Our Paras team made its BTCC debut at Brands Hatch, qualifying in 24th place but making impressive gains in pace throughout the day.

The Infiniti Q50, driven by Derek Palmer Jr, had only completed a handful of laps prior to the Brands Hatch round, and a technical fault stopped the team from running two cars. However, using the day as somewhat of a shakedown, the Scottish driver was pleased with how the team stepped up their game throughout the day.

“It was a bit emotional getting the car out on track, actually, surprisingly so,” Palmer Jr told TouringCarTimes. “I think we did a solid job, the boys have prepared a good car. My plan was to use the free practice sessions to do what I did in qualifying but unfortunately the way the track conditions were we really stepped in to the unknown massively so.

“We had an idea of what we had for a dry weather setup but we weren’t prepared for what it was like this morning, we had no data on that. I really struggled in FP1 to be fair then in FP2 we made a bit of a step forward and qualifying was a bit of a reach in to the bag of tricks to see what we could pull out.”

Despite the struggles both pre-season and in practice, the car improved it’s time massively through the qualifying session, with Palmer Jr lapping three seconds faster by the end of qualifying than he was at the end of FP2.

“I think we found our feet a little from FP1 and FP2,” he continued. “We made big strides so we’ve just got to keep that up. 24th isn’t too bad for a first go, having literally just driven the car for a few laps at Mallory and then this morning. It was very busy out there, it made it difficult to get a time in from a drivers’ perspective. I reckon we could easily have gone a lot quicker, I think a top 20 was actually possible but I just didn’t get the lap.”