Why Pastor Maldonado Will Be the Surprise Driver Not to Score a Point in 2015
Need an indication of just how far Pastor Maldonado has fallen? The second free practice session for last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix provided a perfect example.
Only 15 minutes of the 90-minute session had passed when Roberto Merhi lost control of his Manor Marussia under braking for the Nouvelle Chicane and had a classic Monte Carlo accident, smashing into the outside wall before coming to a halt.
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In the time it took the marshals to recover his car from the scene under red flag conditions, dark clouds had gathered in the mountains and deposited droplets of rain on a part of the world where it was thought the sun always shines, blemishing the unspoiled.
Despite the slippery surface representing the end of any serious running for most drivers and teams, Lotus opted to send Maldonado back out on the track with super-soft, dry-compound tyres within minutes of the session being officially restarted.
What initially appeared to be a ill-judged decision soon became an insane one, as by the time Maldonado reached Casino Square on what would have been his out-lap, the rain started falling with increased intensity, forcing the team to abandon whatever it was they were trying to achieve.
"It's raining too much," reported Maldonado over team radio, according to the FIA television feed.
"OK Pastor, understood. Bring the car back then please, Pastor," came the reply of his race engineer, Mark Slade, no doubt beginning to fear the worst.
What followed was one of the most amusingly tense minutes of the season as Maldonado faced the challenge of returning unscathed to the sanctuary of the garage.
Television pictures cut to a shot of a group of Lotus mechanics, who—not for the first time—were found laughing among themselves as they watched their driver's "progress," and the pit lane held its collective breath as Maldonado tiptoed around the track.
Pastor had always excelled around Monaco, one of the few places where his willingness to play dare with his surroundings has actually played to his advantage.
He won in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2006. He triumphed in GP2 in 2007 and 2009, finishing on the podium in 2008 and 2010. He dragged an uncompetitive Williams as high as sixth place in the 2011 grand prix and, lest we forget, was considered one of the favourites for victory prior to the 2012 event.
Yet here were his Lotus colleagues—and, indeed, much of the F1 fraternity—just waiting to hear the sound of carbon fibre meeting steel, unable to trust Maldonado to make it back to the pit lane, even at slow speed, without pulverising his car.
The Venezuelan, however, salvaged what's left of his reputation by successfully passing the test and, 48 hours later, enhanced it for the first time in a long while by outqualifying team-mate Romain Grosjean by 0.3 seconds, as per the official F1 website.
After a clean start from eighth on the grid, it felt as though this was the afternoon for Maldonado's fortune to change, but his race was ended after just five laps due to braking problems with his Lotus, meaning he has yet to score a single point this season having also retired in Australia, Malaysia, China and Spain.
Although Maldonado has urged the team to rally together after the disappointment of yet another DNF, telling Lotus' official website how "we just need to keep calm and move onto (the next race in) Canada," even he must worry about his prospects for this campaign.
After all, if he can't score points at Monaco—a place that has served him so well over the years—just where will he be able to reach the top 10 in 2015?
We may only be six races into the campaign, but Grosjean's three consecutive points finishes in Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain may be as good as it gets this season for Lotus, who with a distinct lack of resources in contrast to the teams around them are likely to lose out in the development race.
With McLaren almost certain to make further advancements with their Honda power unit, Red Bull Racing (and Scuderia Toro Rosso) set to drag Renault out of their mess and Force India, as reported by Autosport's Lawrence Barretto, planning to introduce a B-spec car at Silverstone, Lotus could quite easily find themselves overtaken in the pecking order by as many as four teams in the coming weeks.
That would leave even a driver as fast and consistent as Grosjean, never mind a hot-and-cold performer such as Maldonado, with a considerable fight on his hands to score points, placing an emphasis on the team to score the majority of their points early on, when they—depending on a circuit's layout—have the fourth-fastest car behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Williams.
While Grosjean has cashed in, dragging Lotus to seventh in the current constructors' standings, Maldonado has acted as an anchor, preventing his team from greater success and a serious assault on the top five.
It is, of course, embarrassing for a driver to finish a season with no points, but in 2015, when only two men—Merhi and Will Stevens, representing a Manor team who arguably deserve no place on the Formula One grid—have no realistic chance of scoring, it would be particularly humiliating.
It would see them symbolically cut adrift from, and left behind by, the serious competitors in the sport and confirm their status as pointless in both senses of the word.
With 13 rounds still remaining, there is every chance that Maldonado will finally string a clean, trouble-free weekend together and record his first top-10 finish since last year's United States Grand Prix. But as his point-scoring drought continues, the tension will only grow on his side of the garage, and the unthinkable could become a reality.
As the Lotus mechanics confirmed in FP2 in Monaco, you wouldn't put anything past Pastor.
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