Alpine F1

On Sunday, Pastor Maldonado pulled off the circuit just 29 laps into the Australian Grand Prix. Fourteen laps later, his Lotus teammate, Romain Grosjean, joined him in retirement from the first Formula One race of the season.

Strangely, in the new, hybrid-power unit (not engine) world of F1, this double-retirement actually represents a positive result for the team.

There was concern the Lotus cars may not make it to the starting grid even before the two drivers combined for only 33 laps—and zero competitive times—in the three free practice sessions in Melbourne.

The Saturday qualifying session did nothing to allay those fears. Grosjean managed only six laps, the quickest of which was nearly two seconds slower than any other car on track. Maldonado did not even complete a timed lap.

Still, both drivers did start the race and were actually making progress before the issues with the Energy Recovery System—specifically, the Motor Generator Unit - Kinetic (or MGU-K)—forced both cars to stop:

Despite the disappointing result, Grosjean said, in a team press release:

In a way, it was a pretty positive day. I expected to do around 15 to 20 laps in the race after all the issues we’ve had this weekend, and we managed 45! We’ve learnt a lot today and all the changes made to the car have been positive. ... We’ve still got lots of work to do, but we’re definitely heading in the right direction.

Talk about setting your expectations low! Especially considering it was just one year ago on the same circuit that Kimi Raikkonen gave Lotus its most recent victory.

Trackside operations director Alan Permane was less enthusiastic in his post-race comments, lamenting that, "In simple terms, we've finished a disappointing weekend with a disappointing race," per the official F1 website.

Of course, the problems at Lotus did not start in Melbourne. Last season, there were financial issues: Kimi Raikkonen did not receive his salary, contributing to his decision to return to Ferrari, and the team's long-awaited partnership with Quantum Motorsport fell through.

The loss of the Quantum money forced the team to sign Pastor Maldonado for 2014, with his significant PDVSA sponsorship and equally significant attitude problems, rather than preferred choice Nico Hulkenberg.

In the offseason, Lotus missed the first test in Jerez and lost a significant number of personnel through lay-offs or—in the case of team principal Eric Boullier, for example—because they found better offers elsewhere.

Given all of that, Grosjean's optimism is understandable. After all, the two Lotus cars completed more race laps in Australia than Red Bull or Mercedes (and—pending appeal—scored the same number of points as Red Bull).

Certainly there are significant issues to be rectified before Malaysia, with the MGU-K at the top of the list, but the team is finally moving in the right direction.

Just before the Australian race, the team announced that the experienced Federico Gastaldi had been promoted to deputy team principal, hopefully stabilising the management structure.

At this point, Lotus is unlikely to replicate last year's success—fourth in the Constructors' Championship, 14 podium finishes—but the season is far from a write-off. If the team can sort its reliability problems, both Grosjean and Maldonado have proved they are capable drivers and Lotus will be back in the points.

Follow Matthew Walthert on Twitter:

Follow @MatthewWalthert

It is easy, given their astronomical success over the last four years, to forget that Red Bull Racing were once considered the “party team” of Formula One. That's not our term—that's theirs.

They owned an extravagant hospitality unit and hosted the finest social gatherings in the paddock—but on the track? Almost anonymous.

This was, after all, a team that openly planned to alternate two drivers, Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi, to partner David Coulthard at the beginning of their debut season in 2005, signed one-race partnerships with the latest Hollywood blockbusters and was beaten by their own B team, Toro Rosso, in 2008. 

Plenty of style, but little in the way of substance. As Lotus, Red Bull's Renault-powered counterparts, are set to discover in 2014, you can't have the former without the latter.

Who back then would have thought that Christian Horner, the man who jumped into a Monaco swimming pool with only Superman’s cape hiding his modesty in 2006, would grow to be central to diffusing tensions between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber at the very summit of F1?

In the period that has seen Vettel secure four consecutive world titles, Red Bull’s parties have evolved from unnecessary distractions from the job to the natural consequences of victory. They are no longer perceived as signs of unprofessionalism or a lack of commitment to the cause, but well-earned opportunities to let the hair down, unwind and relax.

The team has mastered the art of combining work with play to create a vibrant, youthful image to the point where Red Bull is no longer just another energy drinks manufacturer, but among the most successful constructors in the sport’s history.

While Red Bull have surged from the fun team of the grid to the pace-setters in recent seasons, Lotus are slowly regressing to the point where fun will be the only thing left to cling onto.

To see Lotus in their current guise is to observe the meeting of two of the most recognisable institutions in F1: You have Team Lotus, the legendary constructor, founded by Colin Chapman and synonymous with world champions including Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Ayrton Senna, and you have “Team Enstone”, which provided the cars that took Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso to their opening two world titles.

Both the Lotus name and the team’s base in Enstone are woven into the fabric of Formula One, which requires its major organisations to achieve success if it is to succeed itself.

And succeed Lotus have for much of the last two years: Since the beginning of 2012, they have won two grands prix, scored 24 podiums, amounted 618 points and gained thousands of Twitter followers, thanks in no small part to the attraction of Kimi Raikkonen.

As one of the most popular drivers on the grid, Raikkonen added flair to the strong backbone created by team principal Eric Boullier and technical director James Allison. The Finn’s detached nature and intolerance of nonsense is refreshingly at odds with the hullabaloo that so often surrounds the sport.

How ironic, then, that Raikkonen’s blunt personality, which served Lotus so well when T-shirts were printed in tribute to his infamous “leave me alone” team radio messages, exposed the true state of the team’s financial concerns. Raikkonen told BBC Sport’s Andrew Benson that he had “not been paid a single euro all year” ahead of last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

No 140-character Tweet could have outweighed those words uttered by Raikkonen.

The fleeing of Allison, Raikkonen and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer to Ferrari and the departures of Boullier and chief engineer Ciaron Pilbeam to McLaren—not to mention the loss of Dave Wheater to Williams—all since last summer have stripped Lotus to the bone, leaving the team with no leadership, no organisation and nowhere to hide.

The team’s new car, the E22—although typically innovative in design—is likely to suffer from a lack of development as the season progresses. Lotus’ decision to miss the first pre-season test in Jerez, followed by their completion of only 111 laps in the hands of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado over the course of last week’s second test in Bahrain, means the team will still be in the process of learning about its new machine throughout the first half of the season.

To make matters worse, the team’s social media strategists have been hit-or-miss in their efforts to compensate for the loss of Raikkonen.

At their best, their quirky posts, caption competitions and hashtag campaigns are charming, engaging and refreshingly self-deprecating. At their worst, they are spiteful, attention-seeking and embarrassing. For example, the Tweet posted following the confirmation of Raikkonen’s move to Ferrari last September featured an image of two rabbits getting up close and personal.

Another example is Boullier’s "leaving present," a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, posted ahead of the Frenchman’s signing by McLaren to mock McLaren’s supposed dull image.

The team’s biggest blunder by far, however, came ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Lotus posted a good-luck message to the athletes accompanied by an image of two men kissing, a reference to Russia’s ban of “gay propaganda." This crass misjudgment resulted in not only the removal of the Tweet, but an apology by the team. The team owner has strong links to Russia and has attracted sponsorship for the season ahead from Yotaphone, a Russian mobile phone company.

It is an unwritten rule of sport that to have fun, you must first be successful.

If, as expected following such drastic changes in personnel, Lotus cease to be a front-running outfit, lose their status as everyone’s second-favourite team and end up scrapping on the fringes of the points-paying positions in 2014, the joke will firmly be on them.

If you thought Red Bull was in trouble after its disastrous showing in the opening pre-season test of the season in Jerez, then spare a thought for Lotus.

The Enstone team was forced to sit out and watch with interest as many of its rivals, barring Red Bull, racked up important miles testing their new power plants for the first time in anger.

Lotus’ decision not to run in Jerez was due to a combination of many factors, a couple of which were thought to be budgetary factors and shoring up its 2014 entry.

According to the team’s technical director Nick Chester, as quoted by ESPN F1, the reason for missing the test was simply because the car was not ready to run and had also not passed all of the mandatory crash tests:

We're going to keep our car under wraps a little longer than some other teams. We've decided that attending the Jerez test isn't ideal for our build and development programme. We are likely to unveil the car before attending the Bahrain tests, and in Bahrain we should really be able to put the car through its paces in representative conditions.

We've made very good progress with the various homologation tests which took place before Christmas including chassis squeeze and side impact loading tests as well as the rear crash structure, meaning we just have the nose test to complete the car's homologation.

So how big a blow for the team’s preparations could missing the opening test in Jerez turn out to be?

The trials and tribulations of Red Bull and Renault in particular proved what many had feared before the test began—that adapting to the new 2014 regulations is a massive challenge.

It wasn’t only Red Bull who experienced issues with the new turbocharger and ERS unit, which require huge amounts of cooling. Many other cars coughed and spluttered around Jerez before grinding to an untimely halt.

But it will be the woes of Renault that will worry Gerard Lopez the most, the team’s engine supplier managing the least mileage of all as Caterham and Toro Rosso struggled with similar issues.

Before the opening test of the season, McLaren sporting director Sam Michael told Autosport that missing the opening test of the season was not an option:

I'm not sure what advantage you would get from missing it [the first test]. If you push back a test, you normally do it for more wind tunnel testing—you don't do it for reliability. Of course you could do three weeks more work on front wings and diffusers, but you will bring an update package for the first race anyway so there is no advantage. I personally think you don't want to miss those tests. You want to be out there all the time.

Missing the opening test of the season is not Lotus’ only problem ahead of what promises to be make or break for the team.

It was announced on the opening day of the Jerez test that team boss Eric Boullier had left the team to take on the same role at McLaren. This, allied with the defections of both technical director James Allison and star driver Kimi Raikkonen to Ferrari, means that Lotus is in a weaker position than ever before entering a new season.

Then there’s the curious issue of whether or not the bizarre twin-tusk nose on the Lotus E22 is legal or not, although Chester insists the FIA is happy with the design, as quoted by Autosport:

As you know we have passed all the necessary crash tests and we are very confident that our design complies with all the FIA legal requirements. We have just taken an innovative direction, and one that's different to the other teams. Where there are so many variations in design, there is always bound to be a little talk, but we remain relaxed and focussed on our design and progression.

We're very happy with the direction we have taken and it will be very interesting to see how the cars perform once we get a proper chance to compare them on track. The car's coming together pretty well now. The build is well advanced and we think we'll be in good shape for Bahrain come the next test.

With the Bahrain test now only two weeks away, we will soon know exactly how damaging an effect missing the first test will have. Much will also depend on the work that Renault has put into rectifying the issues of Jerez.

There's not a lot of love out there for the rule changes announced this week by the FIA for the 2014 season, the keynote of which was that the final race of the season would be awarded double points.

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel has described it as "absurd," adding that other drivers share his sentiments, per the Press Association's Jamie Strickland via the Daily Mail.

Our writers here on Bleacher Report have also got very little positive to say for it.

Even one of the teams has tweeted their own list of counter-proposals, as Lotus give the rule change short shrift.

Looks like #SillySeason starts earlier each year... #F1 pic.twitter.com/63SQlDP5NY

— Lotus F1 Team (@Lotus_F1Team) December 11, 2013

You can read them above, but suffice to say they're not entirely serious.

Well, that's what we think.

The first rule stipulates that all drivers with a dog named Roscoe (that's just Lewis Hamilton, so far as we know) have to start from the back of the grid—unless it's on an even day.

Good news for Lewis, the rule doesn't apply in April, either.

The rest of the list is similarly facetious.

It might seem like a childish response to the rules, but you can be sure the tweet has summed up the feelings of F1 fans across the world, who don't want to see a gimmick to decide the season.  

If you find yourself squinting to read the list, here's a larger version:

Now that Kimi Raikkonen's manager, Steve Robertson, has confirmed, per Sky Sports, the Finnish driver will miss the final two races of the 2013 season, who is going to replace him?  Lotus has promised an announcement soon, according to ESPN F1, but there are only two plausible choices: reserve driver Jerome d'Ambrosio and third driver Davide Valsecchi.

Both could make a reasonable argument for why the race seat should theirs.  D'Ambrosio has race experience, starting all 19 races of the 2011 season for Marussia.  He also raced for Lotus at the 2012 Italian Grand Prix, filling in during Romain Grosjean's one-race ban.

Valsecchi has not raced in Formula One, but he does have experience driving this year's Lotus car, the E21, which d'Ambrosio does not.  Valsecchi was in the cockpit for 16 laps at the second Barcelona pre-season test and for 91 laps on the second day of the 2013 Young Driver Test at Silverstone.  He was particularly impressive there, putting in faster times that Pastor Maldonado, Nico Hulkenberg and Paul di Resta, among others.

The 26-year-old Italian is also the Lotus team's official third driver.  He has been with the team at all grand prix weekends this season and was ready to step in for Raikonen at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when the Finn did not arrive at the circuit on time.

The fact that Lotus did not immediately announce which driver will replace Raikkonen in the United States and Brazil indicates that they are considering their options.  Given the drivers' current roles with the team and Valsecchi's experience with the E21, he is the most likely choice.  

If Valsecchi is chosen, he will be the first Italian to start a grand prix since Jarno Trulli and Vitantonio Liuzzi at the 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix.  The current drought for Italian drivers is the longest in F1 history.  In fact, 2012 is the only season since the beginning of the championship in 1950 where no Italian drivers took part in a race.