Even though Pastor Maldonado had a great deal of bad luck at Spa, his teammate Romain Grosjean put Lotus back on the podium for the first time since 2013.

Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with this team. On one hand, they’re exactly where you’d expect them to be, both in the 2015 driver standings as well as the constructor standings.

What I mean here is that, the only teams/drivers ahead of them in the standings are from Mercedes, Ferrari, Williams and Red Bull. Technically it wouldn’t be fair to expect Lotus to top any one of these teams at the moment.

On the other hand, though, they’ve got the experience, both inside and outside the car, and they’ve got the valuable Mercedes power unit which could probably make a freaking ATV look competitive in a Formula 1 race.

What I don’t understand is why there’s such a big drop off from race to race with this team. In some races (on fast tracks especially) they look great, but others they don’t even finish, or they struggle against lesser teams (in theory), like Force India and even Toro Rosso.

Could it be that maybe we’ve overestimated their drivers? Most people aren’t exactly big fans of Pastor Maldonado these days, but crowds generally like Romain Grosjean. The French driver is currently 9th in the standings, behind Red Bull’s Ricciardo and ahead of Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen.

As a team, Lotus currently have 50 points, just one more than Force India (they’re looking mighty quick themselves) and a whooping 58 less than Red Bull.

The question I’m asking is, can Grosjean or Maldonado get the E23 Hybrid back on the podium this year?

Well, if a couple of things work in their favor then yes, they absolutely could. But even at Spa, Grosjean needed Vettel’s rear-right Pirelli to “suicide itself” in order to finish P3 – so you could argue that even though he worked hard for it, he didn’t exactly earn it.

So besides Mercedes, on fast tracks such as Spa or the upcoming Italian Grand Prix (Monza), all Lotus needs to do is edge out either Ferrari, Williams or a Force India in order to sneak into 3rd place on the podium. It’s not at all inconceivable.

Then again, on high downforce tracks such as Singapore, they’ll have to beat Red Bull and Toro Rosso as well.

So I guess that if we were to exclude ‘luck’, all that would be left is the probability that Lotus isn’t getting on the podium again this year. Why? Too many rival teams that are just more consistent, more reliable, and/or have more talented drivers.

Personally, I’d like to see them return to form permanently, and preferably under Renault F1’s umbrella.

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