Jolyon Palmer admits £30k-a-week F1 star was the fastest teammate of his career

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As is always the case in Formula 1, beating your teammate is seen as one of the most important challenges in a season.

The intra-team competition is a great measure of how a driver has fared and can be one of the most intriguing dynamics, as we are currently seeing with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Jolyon Palmer had a shortlived F1 career after graduating from the feeder series Formula 2 in 2016 with Renault. Despite a promising start to his career, he suffered lacklustre results in 2017 and was duly replaced by Carlos Sainz towards the end of the season.

The Briton had a mix of teammates throughout his racing career having partnered former F1 drives Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr in his GP2 career, then latterly with Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg during his time at Renault.

But which teammate was the fastest out of the bunch? Discussing his F1 career on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Palmer names the driver who he felt was the ‘quickest of the lot’ during his time.

Jolyon Palmer names Nico Hulkenberg as fastest teammate

The contrast between Palmer and his teammate Hulkenberg during the season was one-sided after the Briton suffered 15 consecutive defeats in qualifying and had an average deficit of 0.838s.

Hulkenberg’s engineer at Haas, Gary Gannon, said the German has a ‘natural ability’ in qualifying and Palmer believed he was one of the fastest teammates he ever had in F1.

“I had a run of Marcus Ericsson in GP2, Felipe Nasr in GP2, obviously went on to race in Formula 1. Kevin Magnussen, super talented, very fast, and then Hulkenberg, who was probably the quickest of the lot,” said Palmer.

“But you, as any driver, you can’t go into a season thinking you’re not going to match him. And even if maybe some were more naturally talented, there’d always be a way, like I said, with the data, or trying to work out how to get on top.”

Nico Hulkenberg leads head-to-head with Kevin Magnussen

Hulkenberg is currently leading Kevin Magnussen quite significantly in the head-to-head battle this year, having outqualified him 12 times versus three.

In the race results, Hulkenberg leads race results having finished ahead of the Dane 12 times while Magnussen has only achieved it twice this season.

READ MORE: Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg’s life outside F1 from wife to height

The deficit will extend even more at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix now that Magnussen has received a one-race ban for accumulating 12 super licence points on his super licence in 12 months.

Hulkenberg will leave his £30k-a-week drive at Haas at the end of the season to join Sauber in anticipation of the Audi takeover in 2026.