Bad day for midfield generals

Pastor Maldonado qualified ninth but penalties push him to the back of the grid.
Williams and Sauber endured torrid Saturdays that had earlier promised much better results.

Given Pastor Maldonado’s victory in Spain and his prowess driving in Monaco, a lot was expected from the Venezuelan and his Williams team this weekend but it all started to unravel in FP3 when he barged into the Sauber of Sergio Pérez. Maldonado called it a mistake, saying he lost the car because his tyres were cold on his out lap.

The stewards, however, found him guilty of causing a collision as defined in article 16.1 of the Sporting Regulations and docked him ten grid places. It was almost a moot point. On the lap following the collision, Maldonado ran into the barriers at Casino, first damaging the front of his car and then destroying the left rear corner, causing the session to end prematurely.

Williams struggled to get the car rebuilt in time for the qualifying session two hours later. “It has been a tough and busy day for the team,” acknowledged chief operations engineer Mark Gillan. “Pastor picked up heavy damage to his car in FP3 and the car crew did a fantastic job to do the repairs in time for the start of the first session of qualifying.”

Pérez gave Sauber’s garage crew a similarly tough challenge for tomorrow after badly damaging the left side of his car during Q1, which ran hard into the barriers around the Swimming Pool section. While it looked like a fairly typical Monaco moment, Sauber suspect Pérez may have had a problem with his steering before the crash.

“We are still analysing everything to see if there was something wrong with the car,” said the Mexican. “I was on my first lap, so was not pushing a lot. I went into the tunnel and had a lot of understeer and then I went into turns 13 and 14. Thirteen was quite fine but in 14 I just went straight and didn’t get the car to turn.”

Given Pérez’s past record, the Stewards have allowed him to start from the back of the field. To compound a poor day for both teams who had both been tipped to do well this weekend, Kamui Kobayashi and Bruno Senna, team-mates respectively of Pérez and Maldonado have been fined for speeding in the pitlane and Williams have revealed that they also need to change Maldonado’s gearbox, which means he will start on the back row alongside Pérez. Bruno Senna will start 13th and Kobayashi 11th.

Both teams have called it a poor performance. “Our analysis shows that a top five qualifying position was achievable for us today,” said Gillan. “I am disappointed and I expected a much better result," added Peter Sauber.