Pastor Maldonado is looking forward to heading back to some of his favorite circuits in the next few months as Formula 1 returns to Europe after the first flyaway leg of the season.
With Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain now in the books, F1 heads to Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix in two weeks’ time and will remain in Europe for all but one race run until the end of September.
Maldonado has endured a difficult start to the 2015 season, and currently finds himself bottom of the drivers’ championship after finishing just one race.
However, he remains upbeat ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, which was the site of his solitary grand prix victory in 2012.
“I’m happy to be going back to Barcelona, to Europe,” Maldonado said. “We now have maybe the most important races coming up since we are based in Europe and some of the best tracks of the year are coming up.
“Monaco is one of my favourites, Barcelona is awesome, especially since I won! Silverstone, Spa, Monza… They’re all pretty great.”
Maldonado finished 15th in Bahrain last weekend after a brake cooling problem denied him a shot at points, and he believes that he could have finished as high as seventh ahead of Lotus teammate Romain Grosjean.
“The end result could have easily been P7,” the Venezuelan said. “We managed to do a lot at the beginning of the race with the medium compound tires, which was quite good.
“And then the strategy was the right one, especially after the problems in qualifying, we needed to try something different to gain places and jump the cars ahead. It meant that I had always new tires, and it was a lot of fun to push.”
Maldonado has been spending some time in the simulator at Lotus’ factory this week, and will be keen to end his points drought in Spain on May 10.
Lotus will be getting out on track next Monday at the Brands Hatch circuit in England as part of a filming day, which is open to the public. For more information, click here.
