Aitken hopeful of further Renault F1 outings "when I deserve it"

Aitken, who says he is now refocused on his GP3 title campaign with the ART Grand Prix squad, drove Renault's Lotus-built E20 2012 F1 car at the Spanish circuit last week.

After completing more than 200km of running during the day, Aitken insisted that while he was not content to treat the day as a once-in-a-lifetime chance, he must earn any further opportunities.

"I want to do it again!" he told Autosport.

"I had a great time [but] obviously my focus has to go back to GP3 now.

"I've got a round at Jerez in a couple of weeks and there's still a championship to fight for.

"As much as I would love to think about when I can next get into another F1 car it has to be on the back burner for me.

"[But] I'll let Renault figure it out and I'll trust them to give me an opportunity when I deserve it. That's fine for me."

Aitken has been a Renault Academy member since the start of the 2016 season and was given his maiden F1 outing as a reward for hitting performance targets so far this year.

He is currently second in the GP3 standings.

Renault organised a varied programme for Aitken on the day, who was grateful for the opportunity.

"I had some acclimatisation [time] to get to grips with the car and we did a few shorter runs, longer runs, [and] we had a couple of different tyre compounds to use - [different] fuel loads and so on," he explained.

"[There were] a few different scenarios - it was good, we got through a lot of stuff.

"It was a nice variety of running and having Sergey [Sirotkin, Renault's reserve F1 driver] there was good in a having a reference.

"I was quite pleased because I managed to get up to speed really quickly - even quicker than I expected myself.

"On the day [Renault] seemed happy.

"The team took me into everything really well - they prepared me as best as they could and were really nice about the whole thing.

"It was a good experience."