New car for Jolyon Palmer at Monaco
The sight of Jolyon Palmer's car breaking down and rolling to a halt by the side of the track had become a depressingly familiar part of the routine of GP2 race weekends of late.
When the car couldn't even manage to complete the formation lap in Barcelona before the electrical gremlins kicked in again, it was the last straw for the iSport International team.
"Another difficult weekend," said iSport's team principal Paul Jackson after Palmer's engine cut out on the warm-up lap, triggering an aborted start to the Sunday sprint race.
Jackson blamed the premature retirement as being down to "continuing electrical problems on Jolyon's car, which have proved impossible to identify."
The same problem blighted both of Palmer's Bahrain race weekend campaigns, and as a result the team had taken the extreme measure of changing all the components available to it and entering deep discussions with the engine suppliers to try and get to the root cause of the repeated failures.
No other cars on the GP2 pit lane are experiencing the same sort of chronic problems, not even Palmer's team mate Marcus Ericsson sharing the same factory set-up and equipment.
"We have had support from the people at GP2 and some external help from the FIA technical staff, but all to no avail," admitted Jackson. "We would like to thank all who have offered help and assistance"
But finally enough was enough for Jackson, Palmer and the iSport team, and desperate measures have been called for to remedy the problem once and for all.
"The decision has now been taken to build a replacement car for Monaco around a different chassis and engine with all new electrical components," revealed Jackson after Sunday's race at the Circuit de Catalunya.
"The team has a busy week ahead, but will re-group in Monaco and hope to put these troubles behind us, he added, saying that he was looking "forward to concentrating on performance, rather than chasing a problem."
Even though there is slightly less turn-around time now before the next race than usual (as the Monaco race weekend boasts an atypical schedule), the team want to do the work now rather than hold it off any longer and certainly don't want want to have the ongoing technical glitches affect their showing at the most prestigious event of the year.
"Monaco is a special event with many good memories and results for us, so we hope to turn our fortunes around in the principality and kick start our season with some strong results," said Jackson.
