2013 F1 season - Not a classic, but one with its fair share of drama

Lotus – Financial troubles makes them lose their star driver

Lotus are somewhat inconsistent – at one race they may have two cars on the podium and at the next race they might be fighting for barest of points. However, in the second half of the season they turned out to be the closest challenger to Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel. The E21 is extremely similar to its predecessor – fast at high downforce circuits and countries with high temperatures and comparatively slower at low downforce circuits and places with low temperatures.

Talking about the two drivers, Kimi Raikkonen was strong as usual – starting the season with a bang with victory in Melbourne. He stayed in the championship fight till the summer break, scoring five more podiums in the process. However, he started to lose a bit in the second half of the season, most probably due to non-payment of salary. At Belgium, he retired from the race due to a brake issue and in Italy, he finished out of points in 11. These two races brought an end to his streak of 38 consecutive race finishes. Frustrations grew to its peak in India when his engineer sweared while asking him to get out of Grosjean’s way. Raikkonen replied in similar fashion and the next weekend, he openly accused the team for not paying him a single euro all season. And having had already signed for Ferrari for 2014 and beyond, he decided not to part in final two races of the season, putting his back-surgery as an excuse.

This year also saw a new Romain Grosjean whose consistency, particularly in the second half of the season was in total contrast with the Grosjean of 2012 and another fast but fragile driver – Pastor Maldonado. He did had a torrid weekend – in Monaco where he crashed repetitively in practice sessions before crashing into Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo in the race to end his and the Australian’s weekend. Otherwise, he performed exactly like a driver in top team. The most impressive chapter of his second season with Lotus was the sequence of races between Korea and United States where he scored four podiums in five races, including one from 17th on the grid in India.

Pastor Maldonado’s admission

It’s surprising to see a top team like Lotus not being able to hire a driver of their choice for a simple reason that he doesn’t bring money. It’s crazy to see the Enstone based outfit hire a pay driver who was outpaced and outqualified so many times by a rookie driver in the same car. But what we know is that Pastor Maldonado is a quick driver. His victory at Spain and the front row grid spot in Singapore was no fluke. Lotus have made it clear that they are confident of giving a similar treatment to Maldonado and turning him in a consistent driver, without losing any of his speed. Maldonado, like Raikkonen was particularly frustrated with Williams in 2013 and maybe that was a major reason why he performed way below a driver who has won a race before on merit.

Kovalainen – Valsecchi spat

After Raikkonen’s decision to leave the team, Lotus were left with a tough decision – whether to replace the Finn with their test driver Davide Valsecchi or someone with more experience. Since Eric Boullier had ”enough of rookie drivers”, he went for experience. The team’s philosophy was that an experienced driver would be better for Lotus to take the lead in a close fight for second in the championship. And while Kovalainen impressed by making it into Q3 in his comeback race in Austin, he was rather poor in the race, failing to score points. In Brazil, he qualified in 11th place in wet conditions but had another poor Sunday – failing to do anything in dry conditions. In the hindsight, it would have been much better for the team to opt for Valsecchi. At worst, he would have failed to score a single point.

Lotus’ 2013 campaign in stats

Victories – 1Podiums – 14Pole positions – 0Championship – 4th