After Several months of throwing every conceivable offer at Joylon Palmer to leave the Renault F1 team, it’s finally happened, Jolyon Palmer will exit left as soon as the Japanese Grand Prix has concluded. And it can’t happen soon enough. Torro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz, who was scheduled to join Renault in 2018, will take over Palmer’s seat. To leave before the end of your contract is bad enough but to leave before the season is over, with races remaining is a public humiliation for Palmer. His father, who raced in F1 during the 80’s lasted a little longer, six seasons. Jolyon Palmer’s Formula One career is over for good, he joined Lotus as a reserve/test driver in 2015 before it was bought out by Renault. A full race campaign followed for 2016 and during his first season in F1 Palmer showed good ability but was highly inconsistent. As the season wore on it became evident he was prone to making mistakes, driver errors, most of all he lacked pace. He carried this form into the 2017 season and was hardly a match for his new teammate, Nico Hulkenberg. He did manage to pull out a career-high 6th place finish in a tricky wet/dry Singapore GP. Ultimately Singapore was not good enough. The team gave no indication as to what hand they played to finally see the back of Palmer’s head. But it’s very easy to deduce that it must have been a fairly considered severance package. In other words money. Palmer did have fans with the BBC F1 commentary team who consistently provided public support for the hapless driver. Palmer’s father, Dr Johnathan Palmer, also had a brief stint in F1 and arguably was actually worse than his son. However, Palmer Snr, became a very good commentator for BBC F1 during the mid- 90’s giving a precise technical insight into F1 at the time. However, for Palmer Jr, it appears the doors are slamming shut fast. Williams F1 is currently deciding between either retaining Felipe Massa or going for Robert Kubica. Torro Rossa quickly filled their vacant seat with Daniel Kvyat, a man they demoted earlier this season. Kvyat is fast but erratic, makes mistakes, but has the speed. There are no hiding places in F1 if you are not good enough it will show up like a red flag. And, if you lack pace relative to your team-mate then its game over. And it is over for Palmer, it appears there are no other alternative race seats available or rather no seat that a team wants to make available for Palmer.  There have been worse drivers in Formula One than Joylon Palmer but he is by far the worst of the current generation to participate. We’re surprised he lasted this long.