Pastor Maldonado's stricken car is removed from the circuit in FP2 © Sutton Images Enlarge

Pastor Maldonado says his FP2 crash in Singapore was a mistake caused by the erratic behaviour of his Lotus on the super-soft option tyre.

Maldonado brought out the red flags in the second Friday session after slamming into the wall at Turn 10 while on his second flying lap on the super-soft tyre. Maldonado was was unhurt and says the crash was proof of the unpredictable nature of the super-soft tyre after its first few laps.

When asked if he carried too much speed into the corner, Maldonado said: "No, not really no, I was just losing grip from the tyres. I just lost the car, the car was too snappy and I lost the car in the middle of the corner. It was a mistake, the car was too loose and I lost it into the corner.

"The exit is quite narrow so there's no point to recover the car. Even the previous corners I had some big oversteer, but fortunately the previous corners were wider so it was easier to control. In that one I wasn't pushing that hard because the first lap wasn't the best one, the performance was not the same on the second lap time on the option tyre.

"On the prime you are getting better and better and on the option there is only one lap. For one lap the new tyres are absorbing a lot of the problems of the car so the second lap is back to these kinds of problems."

Despite his FP2 shunt Maldonado admits he is encouraged by the improvement shown by Lotus.

"There is a small step on this track, which is quite good for us. Maybe not the greatest one as we want but we're more close to the top ten and we hope to be slightly more competitive in the race. It will be difficult, we know that, but now we are closer. Maybe we are one tenth to the Toro Rosso and in the last race we were nearly a second away, so it's much better. "

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