Lotus has confirmed Romain Grosjean will sit out all five FP1 sessions at the remaining European rounds to make way for Jolyon Palmer.

In his role as Lotus test and reserve driver, Palmer will take part in the next five Friday morning practice sessions having missed out in Monaco and Canada. So far it is Grosjean who has made way for Palmer each time the Briton has run in FP1, with three previous outings coming in China, Bahrain and Barcelona.

While Lotus insists Pastor Maldonado is "not untouchable" despite bringing substantial sponsorship to the team, deputy team principal Federico Gastaldi has confirmed it will be Grosjean who misses out again in the coming races.

"The plan with Jolyon has always been for a decent line-up of FP1 sessions through the season and this includes the bulk of the European races," Gastaldi said. "For Jolyon it means he can make real progress in the car and gain a lot of benefit.

"For Romain, these are circuits he knows very well so it will be the minimum impact for his race weekends. We have a good driver line-up and they work well together. Our engineers are very happy with the feedback given by all three of our drivers."

Grosjean will not take part in another FP1 session until the Singapore Grand Prix in late September as a result of the schedule.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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