Pastor Maldonado says he will keep working hard after suffering more frustration at a sweltering Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang on Sunday.

The Venezuelan, from the Enstone-based Lotus team, suffered from a puncture early in the race before he was forced to retire nine laps from the end with a brake issue.

Teammate Romain Grosjean was running as high as third at one stage before a spin after he collided with Force India’s Sergio Perez saw him drop down the field.

It started to go wrong for Maldonado on lap one, when he was clipped by the front wing of Valtteri Bottas’s Williams, which caused one of his rear tyres to burst.

“Unfortunately there was an inc-ident on the first lap which lost me a lot of time and compromised the race from then on,” said Maldonado, who was spun off at the first corner in the season-opener in Australia.

“Despite dropping to the very back of the field, we switched to a different strategy and we recovered.

“Unfortunately, we suffered from a brake issue, which isn’t great, but it’s effectively our first race and we need to keep working through issues, ready for the next Grand Prix.

“As soon as we have a clean race, we will be fighting for good points.

“The potential is clearly there, especially in the race where the car pace is very competitive and we can score good points.”

Grosjean added: “Overall we had quite a good race with a strong first lap and some nice overtaking.

“I lost a lot of time behind Nico Hulkenberg and then the spin with Sergio Perez in such a fast corner.

“I had some fun overtaking with Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Force India, but we lost too much time to benefit from it.

“Overall the car behaved well though and we’re not far from the top ten so we’ll work to close the gap for China.”

Deputy team principal Federico Gastaldi said Sepang was a missed opportunity.

“Both Pastor and Romain could have scored strongly, but events out of their hands meant they did not,” said Gastaldi.

“That’s motor racing sometimes and we’re firmly focused on China (April 10-12) to open our points account.”