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Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado believes he was "very unlucky" in the Belgian Grand Prix practice crash that was the latest to blight his Formula 1 career.

Prior to the summer break Maldonado endured a Hungarian GP to forget as he incurred three separate penalties during the race.

Then after just 50 minutes of first practice at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Maldonado lost the back end of his Lotus emerging from the right-hander at Les Combes before ramming into a barrier and severely damaging the car.

"I just lost the car in the middle of the corner and when I took the kerb it was very slippery and I completely left the track," he said.

"I nearly saved the car, but it's an area which is very, very narrow - not enough space - and I touched the barrier.

"It was very unlucky because I nearly saved the car. But anyway, it happened.

"This track is always very difficult when you have a moment or whatever, especially at that point where the second sector is quite narrow.

"But this can happen. Now we can't change that. We need to look forward."

Despite missing the remaining 40 minutes of practice one and the opening 30 minutes of second practice as extensive repairs were required, Maldonado heads confidently into the weekend feeling the mistake has not cost him too much.

"We have good data, maybe not a lot on the long run, but we have been able to run low fuel and do good runs," said Maldonado, who finished the afternoon 15th quickest, two seconds adrift of pacesetter Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes.

"Even if the times are not so good we have good data, we just need to catch everything and get it to work best tomorrow.

"But we didn't lose that much to be honest. The plan, even before [the crash], was to wait a bit before heading out on track.

"We managed to do two runs - one prime, one option - then we were ready to do 20 laps for the long-run, but we had all the incidents and we weren't able to run at the end."