No Force India seat for GP2 champion Palmer

Force India has played down Jolyon Palmer’s hopes of moving into formula one next year.

With Sergio Perez still not confirmed officially for 2015, the Silverstone based team announced last week that Briton Palmer, the new GP2 champion, will drive the 2014 car in the post-race Abu Dhabi test next week.

Asked if that could lead to a role in 2015, Force India official Otmar Szafnauer said on Friday: "That’s not the purpose of running him.

"Shortly, maybe even later on this weekend, we’ll announce our full driver lineup. It (Palmer’s test) is for the future," he added.

"As you know we’ve run young drivers in the past. We’ve often run them in FP1 even during the season to help out. Jolyon having won the GP2 championship, we thought he’d be a good driver for us to run in the test post this weekend. He’s driven our simulator and has performed very well. We also want to see how that correlates to track performance but we anticipate he will do a good job for us. It’s also a test for us, so we need good feedback from him as well."