Derek Palmer Jr praised the hard work of his Support Our Paras Racing team after scoring a first point in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton.
The weekend could hardly have started in less auspicious fashion, as it was revealed that TOCA had revoked the team’s second TBL after Max Coates was unable to secure sufficient funding to retain his seat.
But focusing his attentions on track, Palmer put in a solid lap during qualifying to land 22nd on the grid for Sunday’s first race, and while he made no progress from that position in race one, he went on to secure a 15th-place finish in race two to claim a first point for himself and the team since joining at the start of the season.
Speaking to TouringCars.Net, the 28 year-old was pleased to have put his first points on the board, but insisted he felt that he could have achieved more.
“We scored some points which we’ve been trying to do since Oulton Park so that was good,” said Palmer. “I don’t think we showed our full hand this weekend; we had a power steering failure in race two and that was difficult.
“Then for race three it was great to start up in 15th place and I made a good start, but then I got in a tangled which damaged the steering, and then I got a slow puncture which turned into a full-blown puncture.
“Race three could have been great, and it’s a bit frustrating that it wasn’t but that’s the nature of the business.”
Palmer’s pace had been consistently improved across the weekend and the Scotsman insisted that his team had made progress with its Infiniti Q50, adding that his on-track exploits were just reward for their efforts.
“We’ve definitely done so, and we’re constantly looking to make steps forward,” he said. “We’ve not really done any testing this season and given the hurdles we’ve had to overcome we’ve been on life support just to get to the end of the season.
“We’re here, we want to stay here and I think we belong here. I think we’ve proved that this weekend – we didn’t do the tyre test but we came here and were still competitive; I’ve never been round here before.
“I feel great for the guys, they’ve been putting in such a massive effort; it’s been such a steep learning curve for them this year so to get a reward like that out of it is fantastic.
“It’s what I wanted to do to give something back to them so I’m stoked with that.”