Abiteboul still hoping to keep Palmer in the 'Renault family'

Despite his departure from Renault's F1 outfit in the latter part of 2017, Jolyon Palmer still has the support of the French manufacturer, according to Cyril Abiteboul.

Following his lack of results, Palmer was sidelined by Renault after the Japanese Grand Prix last year to make way for the early arrival of Carlos Sainz.

While the British driver retains the manufacturer's support, efforts to place Palmer somewhere lese within the Renault family have not yet been successful.

"I think it's fair to say Jo and his family are now more in complete control of the next steps and their future," Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.

"We did try to look at options, which I don't want to detail publicly, but I don't think Jonathan or Jo would challenge the fact we've been extremely helpful - the best we could.

• Gone but not forgotten, at least by Renault...

"The avenues we explored have not worked out so far, but we will see - Renault is a large family in motorsports, we have a number of activities, so we will see what the future can hold for everyone."

It is believed the 26-year-old may be contemplating a move to Formula E, either with the edams works Renault team or the Techeetah outfit which enjoys a technical partnership with the manufacturer, but a concrete opportunity has yet to come to the fore.

"I think there was maybe a timing issue," said Abiteboul on the subject of Formula E.

"Maybe we could have developed something if there could have been an earlier buying into the process from all involved, but that's not happened so far.

"We will see. Anything we can do to help Jo we will do, because I really think he deserves to be in a world class championship."

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