Pastor Maldonado and Marcus Ericsson made no secret of their frustration after both suffering hefty crashes during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday.
During FP1 at Spa-Francorchamps, Maldonado ran wide at Malmedy and lost control of his car before sliding back across the track and into the wall.
The Venezuelan driver walked away unharmed, but the same could not be said of his car which had sustained a large amount of front-end damage in the impact.
“Today wasn’t the start to the grand prix weekend that we wanted,” Maldonado conceded.
“I lost the rear end in FP1 and unfortunately I wasn’t able to keep the car off the barriers. My crew did a great job to get everything back together for FP2, but then there were a couple of red flags to interrupt that session too.”
In spite of the incident, Maldonado seemed encouraged by Lotus’ performance in practice and general pace at Spa.
“I think we can have a good weekend from now,” he said. “There’s good potential in the car and we know what we need for a strong result.”
Ericsson’s crash came just minutes after FP2 had resumed following Nico Rosberg’s tire blowout, prompting a second red flag period on Friday afternoon.
Heading through Pouhon, a high-speed left-hander, Ericsson touched the kerb and lost control of his car, causing it to spear off-track and into the wall at high speed.
Like Maldonado, Ericsson was unharmed, but was quick to apologize to the team for making a mistake.
“Unfortunately at the end of the session I made a mistake in Pouhon,” Ericsson said. “I touched the grass, the car snapped and I hit the wall.
“I want to apologize to the team for this incident, which has given them a lot of extra work. It is racing, sometimes it happens, but when it happens it is, for sure, frustrating.
“Before the accident it had been a good day for us, and some of the outcomes from what we were doing were positive.”
Qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix is live on CNBC and Live Extra from 8am ET on Saturday.
