Renault believes it is back in Formula 1's midfield

The French manufacturer has had a frustrating F1 season, having purchased Lotus over the winter, but in the last three races has enjoyed an upturn in form.

It scored points for just the second and third times this campaign in Singapore and Malaysia, and while Renault missed out at Suzuka, there were signs its outright performance had taken a step forward.

Palmer matched the pace of Williams's Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, who ended up in the points.

However he lost out in traffic and ultimately finished 12th with team-mate Kevin Magnussen 14th in a race with no retirements.

"The pace was really good, the same as Massa in the Williams," Palmer told Autosport.

"I just got caught up in traffic quite a lot, and lost a bit there.

"Everything else was quite smooth. We had good pace, good strategy, kept the tyres alive and that's what we've been doing quite well the last two races.

"We managed to jump into the midfield.

"McLaren had a bad weekend, which was good for us, Toro Rosso have slipped back - Singapore they had a one off good one - so I think there's now more people in the midfield.

"We pretty much matched Williams in the race, they were a little bit quicker than us in qualifying.

"Finishing 12th is very good and if you do that every race we would be getting points most races as normally you can expect a couple of cars in the top half to drop out or have some sort of scruffiness in the race."

Team principal Vasseur agreed Renault is on an upward trajectory, but said qualifying is an area it is still lacking.

"The performance was there in FP3 and we had approximately the same pace in the race, we were fighting with the Williams," told Autosport.

"We have to understand exactly what is happening in qualifying.

"We didn't do a good job altogether and we have to improve on our qualifying pace - that for sure is the key of the weekend.

"We know that we have a lack of downforce and that we didn't manage 100% the situation in qualifying.

"Then if you look at FP3 and qualifying, between P8 and P20 was very close so it means that as soon as you are in good form, you are at the top of the group and if you do a mistake you are at the back."

RENAULT'S PURE PACE
Fastest time set by a Renault driver in each 2016 grand prix weekend, across all sessions, relative to the outright fastest of the weekend (100%).

Australia: 104.060%
Bahrain: 104.121%
China: 103.429%
Russia: 103.752%
Spain: 103.201%
Monaco: 103.309%
Canada: 103.635%
Azerbaijan: 103.734%
Austria: 102.587%
Great Britain: 103.906%
Hungary: 102.464%
Germany: 103.057%
Belgium: 101.631%
Italy: 103.815%
Singapore: 104.134%
Malaysia: 102.614%
Japan: 102.371%