Palmer: Formula E “more successful than people were expecting”

Reigning GP2 champion Jolyon Palmer was in the Formula E paddock in London on TV duties, but had time for a brief chat with e-Racing’s James Newbold.

Q. Is Formula E a series you would consider?

A. At the moment I’m focused on Formula One so not really, but it’s definitely an interesting series and I’m always keeping an eye on things. It’s nice to be here as well in my home city, it’s good. I’ve been following it a bit when it’s not been clashing with F1 basically. It’s been a lot more successful than people were expecting, good entertainment really. It’s very different to Formula One and different to any conventional racing series, it’s quite refreshing.

Palmer (left) with fellow second-generation racer Alex Brundle in the paddock (Own photo).

Q. How have you found the step-up from GP2 to Formula One?

A. It’s not huge to be honest. In Formula One these days there is a lot of power and a huge amount of torque, so there’s a lot of performance in a straight line. The biggest difference is the complexity of F1, where you’ve got 70 people at the track on a race weekend compared to 13 in GP2. There’s lots of stuff happening on the steering wheel and loads of procedures to do, but so far it’s gone well. We did the Test Days in Austria and Barcelona and a few FP1s, so I feel pretty comfortable in it now. Obviously not being a race driver the car isn’t designed around me or set up for me so there’s a bit of adapting to do, but it’s been fine.

Q. What are your plans for next season?

A. I don’t want to be a third driver again. It’s a good thing to do for a year to learn the ropes, but the plan is to learn the ropes and then try and get a seat, hopefully with Lotus. We’ll see what happens.