Lotus is not planning to promote Jolyon Palmer to a race seat next year and has confirmed it has Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean signed on until the end of 2016.
Lotus paired Maldonado with fellow former GP2 champion Grosjean last season and this year added Palmer, the most recent winner of F1's feeder series, to the role of third driver. Palmer has already competed in several FP1 sessions this year and will continue that trend at every European round of the season, while he was also behind the wheel for both days of the post-Austrian GP test.
However, when asked by F1i whether Palmer was in the running for a 2016 seat, deputy team principal Federico Gastaldi said: "No, at the moment we have the same [line-up]. Pastor and Romain are signed until the end of the next season and we hope Jolyon will stay with us as well as a third driver."
Lotus are keen to keep the Englishman in his current role for another season and Gastaldi admits he sees him as a vital part of the team's future.
"He's here because he's been winning in all the series to be here. It's not by mistake he's here, we have big plans for him. He's obviously now going through the learning process to be more confident with a Formula One car. So I think he's the future.
"He's a good driver, that's for sure. It would be good to have the next good English driver around us."