Palmer’s backing ‘not big’ compared to others

Although Jolyon Palmer did have to put some money down for his Lotus seat, he reckons it as not a lot compared to other drivers.

This season saw the 2014 GP2 Champion take the role of Lotus' test and reserve driver while included a run of Friday practice sessions.

However for each of those, will amount to 13 by the end of this season, Palmer reportedly paid around £250,000 per session.

Impressing Lotus during those runs, the 24-year-old will step up into a race-seat for 2016.

And it hasn't cost him much more than what he's already being paying.

"Well not really, no," he told F1i.com when asked if he had to find more backing to clinch the race-seat.

"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."