Palmer to get his first run in new Lotus at Barcelona

2015 F1 season

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New Lotus third driver Jolyon Palmer will have his first run in the team’s 2015 car in this week’s test at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Palmer, the reigning GP2 champion, will drive the car on the second day of the test on Friday. The son of former F1 driver Jonathan Palmer was confirmed as Lotus’s third driver last month and tested for Force India at the end of 2014.

Pastor Maldonado will be at the wheel when the test begins tomorrow and drive again on Saturday, bringing him up to a total of four days in the E23.

However the team’s other race driver Romain Grosjean will only have his second day in the new car on Sunday.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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11 comments on “Palmer to get his first run in new Lotus at Barcelona”

  1. Grosjean’s getting very poor milage this year…

    1. Still better than last year!

    2. I would argue he doesn’t need it as much as the others do!

      1. Maybe he doesn’t, but the car does!

  2. shouldnt grosjean have now two days and maldonado just one? if i were the team director i would treat grosjean as the number one driver that he is!

    1. More money = More miles

    2. @bgp001ruled, this is the second of the three pre-season tests which have been scheduled for this year, so Lotus can quite easily redress the balance in the final test (give Grosjean three days and Maldonado one, and they’d be equal on five days each).

      Asides from that, perhaps it is just me, but I don’t remember people complaining when Kimi was being blatantly favoured by Lotus in pre-season testing (not just getting more mileage, but also getting to test upgrade packages that Grosjean wasn’t given access to until the third race of the season).

      1. kimi is kimi! grosjean is grojean! they are not on the same level! in that case, i would put grosjean on a more equal level to maldonado. but grosjean is better and doesnt crash that much (now)…

        1. @bgp001ruled, given that the team rarely gave Grosjean the opportunity to be on an equal footing – Kimi was given first access to upgrade packages and was offered bespoke developments to help him alone, so the two were rarely driving the same specification car – I would argue that you can’t definitely say that Kimi was the better driver given that the bias of the team towards him had a negative impact on Grosjean’s performance (as Boullier himself admitted during his time there).

  3. Congratulations to Jolyon, I am sure his experience and temperament is an asset to Williams.

    1. Duh! What a bozo! Didn’t read the article properly! I should have written “Lotus”. Well, I hope Jolyon’s experience and temperament aren’t beneficial to Williams.
      Well, posting here is like driving: if you make a mistake it is there forever: you can’t go back and change things.
      Anyway, congratulations to all the new drivers, it is a dream come true, so I hope they do well.

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