Australian Grand Prix 2016: How Jolyon Palmer cheated death to emulate dad

Quadbike accident almost killed Jolyon but nine years on he is a Formula One driver just like his dad used to be, writes David Tremayne in Melbourne

Jolyon Palmer says his father Jonathan 'has mellowed out so much' since he started racing (Getty Images)

Nine years ago it was uncertain whether Jolyon Palmer would live, let alone progress in racing. But this weekend he becomes not just the latest Briton to race in Formula One, but another to follow in the wheeltracks of a grand-prix racing parent.

Back in 2007 he crashed a quadbike, and bone chipped from his spine sliced through one of his kidneys. He was only 16 and on the cusp of a motor racing career in his father Jonathan’s Formula Palmer Audi series. “I was racing in the woods near my house with a couple of mates. Absolute idiocy. I was in the lead and looked behind me, and as I did that I think I turned the handlebars a tiny bit, which off-balanced me, and I smacked into a tree.”

He was in an induced coma for three days and intensive care for three weeks, having sustained broken ribs as well as liver damage. He smiles when he says he was peacefully unaware of his precarious plight but he has a huge scar on his stomach as a permanent reminder. “You think, ‘What can go wrong?’ And then when it does go wrong, it goes wrong pretty quickly and it can be bad.”

But that’s ancient history for the 25-year-old, who recovered sufficiently to win Formula Two and GP2 titles on his way to his new berth in a Renault F1 race seat.

“It’s massively different in every sense,” he says of his role as race driver rather than the test and reserve function he fulfilled with the team in 2015. “In terms of my general life, there’s just so much more going on. When you’re a test driver you’re working hard with the team and you’re travelling all the time. But then you’re a race driver, and suddenly the work is way harder.

“I’ve got my own race team within the team, my own engineers to work with. Every day we’re communicating and trying to understand everything better, whereas last year that was not so much the case. The engineers were working with Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, and I was doing my own stuff.”

When Maldonado’s Venezuelan oil money ran out he was ousted by Danish hotshoe Kevin Magnussen, who gave Jenson Button a hard time at McLaren in 2014 before being dropped in the Englishman’s favour when Fernando Alonso came on board. On the face of it, that’s bad news for rookie Palmer, who had shown up well against Maldonado last year, but the racer in him sees things differently.

“I’m quite happy that I’ve got Kevin as a team-mate,” he says breezily. “He’s great and he gave Jenson a massive run for his money at McLaren. So, he’s a good team-mate for me to have because I want to show well against the best. Kevin is a highly rated driver, so if I can beat him...”

Did he feel well prepared for today’s opening race in Melbourne after reliability problems in testing? “Reasonably. I feel as though I had as much running as I did last year, because the car’s not massively different. It’s an evolution, and the engine doesn’t feel massively different. Renault has, in fairness, made a good step, but the problem is the goal’s always moving. I feel I’m ready to start the weekend. I’ve been itching to for a year already, so I can’t complain.”

He liked his first experience of Albert Park, having previously experienced it only in the simulator.

“Obviously, I want to be very competitive,” he says of his expectations. “I enjoy the challenges of trying to get on top of these situations. It’s the same for everyone and you just need to clear your head and get on with it. I’m quite capable of not letting anything affect me, and of just sticking to a plan and putting it together. So, I don’t think there’s a big difference to anything else I’ve raced.”

In many ways he is quite different to his father, more laidback, less pushy, yet just as determined beneath the surface, and as attentive to detail. Palmer Snr, who raced for Williams, RAM, Zakspeed and Tyrrell in the Eighties and early Nineties, somehow manages not to be a typical racing dad, despite his own racing experience. “He’s mellowed out so much since I started racing,” his son says of him. “He comes to races just because he enjoys it. And that’s nice for me. I appreciate that he doesn’t try and get involved because no one really likes that in racing dads, not even me!”

Father rarely advises son, though they discuss many things. “As regards driving, or his graduation, I’ve said nothing,” Palmer Snr admits. “Jolyon is experienced and intelligent and very capable, and knows what’s involved. And the reality is that my knowledge is based on a very different era. At Tyrrell there were 75 people, now at Renault there are 475. And there is a vast difference in organisation, in the meticulous analysis of data.”

Where he has contributed has been in the decisions on where his son should race, which F1 teams to talk to, and contractual affairs.

“The one thing I insisted was that we shouldn’t discuss F1 until he had won the GP2 championship,” he says. “Once he had done that in 2014, he had the credibility. Overall, I’m impressed how confident he is, and how he can be outspoken but not in an arrogant way.”