Maldonado Expects Reliability Issues to be Resolved by China

Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean power around Malaysia during the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday, March 29, 2015. — Photo: Lotus F1

In the first two races of the season Lotus have suffered three DNF’s. Romain Grosjean encountered a power failure in Australia and Pastor Maldonado was plagued by a crash in round one and a brake failure in round two. Heading to Shangai next week, Maldonado is confident his team’s technical problems will be relieved.

Maldonado said that Malaysia “was very hot and in those conditions the car didn’t look bad. During the race, even with the damage we had from the floor after the contact from Valtteri Bottas in the first corner, our pace was very consistent.”

“We had a couple of small reliability issues but the team’s working very hard on this, and we expect to have these resolved by China,” he said.

Neither of the Lotus drivers have scored points this year but Maldonado thinks that will change at the third round of the season, too. “I’m looking forward to getting out in action in Shanghai and hoping for a clean weekend when we should be able to get some points,” he said.

“I think we should be in a similar position to that we’ve been in for the first and second race, so fighting for the top ten in qualifying and then in the race. Let’s see what the track conditions are like, the weather, how the car feels and how good a set-up we can get. I’m confident we should be fighting for good places.”

At the Chinese Grand Prix last year, Romain Grosjean had a gearbox issue that forced him to retire on lap 28.

Highlights From The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Race highlights from the 2015 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg; round one.

Power Ranking The IndyCar Field After St. Petersburg

Each week, eleven IndyCar bloggers come together to power rank the IndyCar field after that weekend’s race.

Photo: Chris Owens

The guys over at WFOpenWheel set this system up and have let Single Seater’s founder, Drew Bennison, have a say in the rankings.

Along with the rankings, Aaron Bearden writes up a nice report of the race and of each driver’s performance in that event. Votes are cast the Monday after the race and compiled for use in the article. The process used is below, courtesy of WFOpenWheel:

WFOpenWheel sends out a survey to a group of dedicated IndyCar bloggers and the site’s own IndyCar experts following every race. On the survey, each participant ranks every driver from first to last. Drivers are then awarded points on a scale based on the IndyCar points system. Drivers accumulate points over time, making it more difficult to move up the ranks. Once all participants have taken the survey, points are totaled, and the finalized rankings are calculated.

After round one at St. Petersburg, the current top five looks like this:

Will Power – 900 points
Juan Pablo Montoya – 703 points
Simon Pagenaud – 640 points
Tony Kanaan – 599
Scott Dixon – 596

You can view the current power rankings in full here.

Race Notes: Malaysian Grand Prix

Cars on track during the 2014 Malaysia Grand Prix. — Photo: Mercedes AMG Petronas

Formula One heads to Malaysia on Sunday with Lewis Hamilton in control of the points so far. The Briton won the event last year on his way to claiming his second world driver’s championship. He’ll be looking for more of the same this year.

Schedule:

Qualifying: Saturday, 5 a.m. ET
Race: Sunday, 3 a.m. ET

Mercedes showed clear dominance in the opening round of the 2015 season. Hamilton and Nico Rosberg beat the entire field by over 33 seconds and no other car besides the Mercedes duo led a single lap. Not one. Sebastian Vettel drove an impressive race for Ferrari and picked up 15 points for the team. Vettel has won the Malaysian Grand Prix three previous times.

Reliability, as predicted, was a huge issue for teams before the race even started last week. Kevin Magnussen, Daniil Kvyat, Pastor Maldonado, and Romain Grosjean failed to complete one lap of the race due to mechanical failures. They were joined by Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen on laps 32 and 40, respectively. Both of the Manor Marussia cars and Valtteri Bottas failed to start the race.

Malaysia should be another walk in the park for the silver arrows. Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso are expected to return, but the McLaren has been way off the pace and judging from Australia, the Ferrari will be more of a competition to Mercedes than Williams will be. Pat Symonds even said so earlier this week. Felipe Massa managed a fourth place finish last week after a retirement from Kimi Raikkonen.

The notoriously high temperatures we see each year at Sepang could also spark reliability concerns this week. Five cars retired from last year’s Grand Prix due to reliability issues. They were mainly engine and brake issues. McLaren’s tightly packaged aero design won’t have an easy time in Malaysia. And they may be forced to turn down their engine power again just to get through the race.

Saturday will be an important day in deciding who comes out on top in Malaysia. Out of the 16 Formula One races that have been run at Sepang (dating back to 1999), the winner of the race has started on pole nine times. Furthermore, 14 of the winners started in the first two rows. The only drivers to start from further back are Raikkonen (P7, 2003) and Alonso (P8, 2012). Malaysia is a tough track to win at if you don’t start up front.

Off The Track
After the Australian Grand Prix, Christian Horner said that he wants the FIA to change engine and car regulations to rein Mercedes in. Horner said that “the FIA, within the rules, have an equalization mechanism; I think it’s something that perhaps they need to look at.” Renault’s power unit, which was said to be improved from 2014, had a poor showing in Australia. Do you think the FIA should help equalize the competition to make the sport more exciting? Let us know in the comments below.

Current Points Standings

Supplement Your IndyCar Viewing Experience With Our Live Blog

The IndyCar season gets started this Sunday on the streets of St. Petersburg. It’s the start of the battle for the 2015 championship which Will Power will hope to win for the second year in a row. Single Seater will be trying something new for the race. In addition to our race notes which will come out on Saturday, we will host a live blog for the race itself.

But no, this won’t be your average, generic live blog. At Single Seater, we are devoted to data journalism and statistics, and that’s exactly what our live blog will be like. Turn on the TV and pull up our stat-based live blog as a nice supplement.

Instead of just highlighting what’s going on in the race, our live blog will talk about statistics, race strategy, and other interesting topics surrounding the race. We’ll talk about tire data, caution stats, and why Will Power pitted when he did. If you have any questions throughout the race, you can leave them in the comments during the live blog and we’ll try our best to answer them for you!

It’ll be fun. Join us here on Sunday at 3 p.m. ET when the race starts as we talk about the numbers, data, and stats behind the 2015 IndyCar season opener.