Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado – the unlucky ones

Lotus’ Romain Grosjean and Williams’ Pastor Maldonado have been the most unlucky guys during the first two races of the 2012 season.

Both the Lotus E20 and the Williams FW34 have been a significant step forward over their predecessors – the E20 in all circumstances and the FW34 especially in race trim. But some unfortunate circumstances have deprived the Frenchman and the Venezuelan from well-deserved championship points in both Australia and Malaysia.

Romain Grosjean

He was the star of Australian Grand Prix qualifying as he put the Lotus 3^rd on the grid ahead of both the Red Bulls. It was quite an achievement because it was Romain’s first F1 qualifying session after a two-year hiatus. But the dream return to Formula 1 ended for Romain very early during the race when he was hit by Pastor Maldonado (who ironically, is the other unlucky guy!) whose Williams caused front right suspension damage on the Lotus and that was race over for Romain.

He was again unable to progress past the first few laps in Malaysia. On the first lap, he hit Michael Schumacher from behind and that resulted in both of them spinning. Then on Lap 4, Romain spun on his own, most probably due to aquaplaning, and his car got stuck in the gravel. He had managed to keep the engine running and requested the marshals to push him out of the gravel but the marshals were unable to do that and again Romain was left utterly frustrated with an early retirement.

The Lotus is a very competitive car capable of fighting at the front so it hurts even more when you cannot display the potential of the car when it matters, on Sundays, and in the process lose valuable championship points.

Romain has said that his season now begins in China and we hope that there wouldn’t be any incidents during the first few laps for him and he will be able to bring home his first points this season.

Pastor Maldonado

He was the one who took out Romain from the Australian Grand Prix but sadly, himself crashed out on the last lap of the race. Pastor was all over Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari during the final few laps of the race and it took some spirited defending from Fernando to keep the Williams at bay. But on the final lap, Pastor rode a kerb and spun out of the race which must have left every member of the Williams team gutted especially because 8 championship points were in the bag, which were more than what Williams were able to win during the entire 2011 season.

In Malaysia, after mastering changeable conditions, Williams seemed to be heading for a double points finish with Bruno Senna in 6^th and Pastor Maldonado in 10^th. But disaster struck on the penultimate lap when Pastor had an engine failure and had to retire.

It must be so frustrating for Pastor that he was so close to seeing the chequered flag on both occasions but lost out on 9 important championship points as they would have been very helpful in silencing his critics who label him as a ‘pay driver’. Williams have a strong car this season and that should give him confidence to move forward and win his first 2012 points at the next race in China.