Monaco damage forces Palmer into another new Renault F1 chassis

Palmer crashed on the start/finish straight just as racing got under way in Monaco after seven laps behind the safety car on the wet track.

The damaged chassis had been a new one provided for the previous race in Spain after the British rookie had struggled with the feel of his car early in the season.

Having assessed the Monaco damage back at the factory, Renault has been forced to introduce another new chassis, which was fortunately well on its way through production.

"Jolyon's incident means we will use a new chassis - R.S.16-04 - for Montreal," said Renault technical director Nick Chester.

"The car hit the barriers quite hard at an oblique angle which damaged the front of the chassis and since we have a new chassis available it makes sense to introduce it.

"Fortunately, 04 was pretty far along on its build so we only needed to complete fuel cell installation and wiring for it to be ready for Canada."

Palmer apologised to the team for the crash and has been at the factory assisting with the rebuild.

"I have been in Enstone since Monaco, to get some time in the sim but I did also offer to get the spanners out to help build the new chassis," he said.

"I'm very grateful for all the hard work that goes in at the track and back in Enstone and Viry and I did more than my fair share of damage to the car in Monaco."

Palmer, who has yet to score year, will get the upgraded power unit team-mate Kevin Magnussen used in Monaco and is hoping it will coincide with a better run of form.

The new unit is expected to give the team as much as 0.5 seconds in laptime gain at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

"The new engine will be in and we should be more competitive," said Palmer.

"We had hoped to be better in Monaco, but I'm looking forward to having the new engine now. It will be worth a lot in Canada.

"We've seen already the engine is working well, it was on pole [in the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo], so they've had some benefit from the new engine.

"If it was working well in Monaco then in Canada it's going to be working much, much better, so we can be positive about that."