It has been revealed that Pastor Maldonado was responsible for his retirement on Sunday.

The hapless Venezuelan's car ground to a halt after just two laps, his seventh DNF of the season. Meanwhile, Lotus teammate Romain Grosjean gave a sterling performance, going on to take his first podium finish since Austin 2013.

"We had been doing a great job this weekend, especially yesterday," said Maldonado after the race. "The car was feeling very good, very competitive and I had a good race start. We had an issue with the drive of the car which the team are investigating."

Said investigation however, did not exactly go Pastor's way.

"Maldonado's retirement was self-inflicted," revealed Trackside Operations Director, Alan Permane. "He had a huge off at Eau Rouge. That damaged the clutch-control system. The valves were damaged and that locked his clutch out. That's why he couldn't get back."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by stoney, 25/08/2015 20:56

"@Rock Doc - you beat me to it ;)"

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2. Posted by Rock Doc, 25/08/2015 13:03

"Well it is obviously the medias fault for actually reporting it. Pastor might have been believed if they had just kept their noses out ... Oh that's there job."

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3. Posted by scf1fan, 25/08/2015 12:22

"Well I can see this is a going to be growing problem . . . Maldonado and his clutch, Rosberg and Vettel with their tires, etc. The easiest thing to do would be to build components that are more robust! And in some cases, that is probably the best possible solution. (Usually indicated by multiple failures over time.) But that could invariably lead to slower lap times (due to increase weight) and still wouldn't preclude the odd debilitating occurrence. (The sharp edge of a curb exposed due to an over night rain that a particular driver might cut their tire on due to a peculiar line.) If the drivers feel that they are unsafe on a track because of some reasonably probable mode of failure, then it's probably the track that needs the work. (Run off areas, tire/safer barriers, etc.) But I'm a little confounded by the expectation of SV and NR to have tires guaranteed to have a minimum life expectancy, or that every failure mode on a vehicle going 200 mph and/or capable of pulling 4 g's can be made benign. Generally speaking, since only 2 tires failed out of over 500 used (aprox.) throughout the f1 weekend, I'd say the tire failure rate was significantly less than the driver failure rate. ;-) Hopefully we won't hear PM blame the guys who made the clutch system . . . "

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4. Posted by Darvi, 25/08/2015 11:03

"Who would have thought...... "

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Maldonado's spa retirement "self-inflicted"

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