Palmer backing modest compared to other drivers

Jolyon Palmer says the amount of money he is bringing with him to Lotus next season is “not big compared to a lot of other drivers” on the F1 grid.

The 2014 GP2 champion has been promoted to a race seat at Lotus following Romain Grosjean’s decision to leave the team for Haas. Amid some uncertainty over the team’s ownership, Lotus made the decision to pair Palmer with Pastor Maldonado next season, with the Venezuelan bringing significant backing to the team.

Asked by F1i if Lotus had asked him to find more backing throughout the year in order to secure a race seat, Palmer replied: “Well not really, no.”

“It’s obviously a thing in F1 now that driving is not enough but I think the level of backing that I’ve got is not big compared to a lot of other drivers out there.”

“So it’s been something that we’ve been working on all year knowing that it’s probably going to be quite important to get a seat but in the end it’s just come about with Lotus and also Renault.”

“What has been important has been the performance side, the engineering side and then trying to help out on the sponsorship side as well.”

And Palmer says he is not unsettled by the time it is taking for the planned Renault takeover to be completed.

“I’m not hugely worried about that. I’m just going to focus on my own thing. I’m driving FP1 for the rest of the Grands Prix, get some track time and then it’s just working with the engineers.”

“Obviously now it’s nice that everyone knows I’m in the car so I can work more intensely with them and making sure that I’m feeling sharp, ready for the start of the year. The expectation is it’s going to be a Renault team next year so I think everyone’s just focusing on that.”

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