Sirotkin column: "If only we could redo this season..."

Dear Motorsport.com readers,

The most recent GP2 round in Malaysia well and truly left me with mixed emotions. It was again a weekend tarnished by technical issues, similar to those that had held me back at Monza, and at one point it seemed like we were heading for a repeat of that round.

All in all though, given the circumstances, it wasn't all that bad. The second race was ruined completely, but we had given it a good shot for victory in the first one and could've been on the top step if we had been slightly luckier.

Thursday, which is when GP2 practice was held this time, was already a big reminder of Monza. Just like it had done there, the gearbox was acting up again – although, this time, the issue was not in the electronics but in the hydraulics.

We did only three push laps, which is, frankly speaking, not enough, especially given that I was more or less having to adjust back to GP2 after Formula 1 testing. I had done private tests with Renault's 2012 car at Valencia, a day-and-a-half of work and a lot of kilometres logged.

Going back from that to GP2 and only getting three laps in your return session is not great news. I ran out of time to get a good feel for the car, because at one point the car got stuck in gear and I had to call it a day.

Fourth in qualifying was very nearly the maximum, as I was still getting to know the track and the team has been denied a chance to do valuable set-up work. The qualifying lap itself I could've probably assembled better, finding a couple of tenths and getting closer to the Premas. But we wouldn't have been higher than third, so, overall, I was happy enough with the outcome.

Duelling Giovinazzi

I got a solid start in the opening race, and soon it became clear that the fight for victory was between me and Antonio Giovinazzi. I managed to stay in touch with him throughout the opening stint, and only before the pitstop did he slightly edge away.

We understood that, if we were chasing victory, we would need to risk it with the strategy – and that's why we made the mandatory stop early. He came in three laps later, allowing me to get in front through the undercut – but it was clear that the very end of the race would be very difficult.

The strategy might seem a little too adventurous, but I think we had to at least give it a try – we would've had no other chance to beat Antonio. And, hey, it almost worked. If not for snippets of time given up here and there, victory would've been a very realistic outcome.

But crucial time had been lost. Firstly, we had been held up during our stop – when the mechanics were done servicing the car, they had to keep me in for a bit longer because other cars were passing by. After the race, we counted up that that might have cost us at least a couple of seconds, probably more.

Then, we were hit by radio issues, meaning I couldn't work my tyres in the most optimal way. Running into slower cars, I was pushing a little harder than I should have been, thinking that Antonio was behind, as I was trying to keep him out of DRS range. Later I'd find out that the team was trying to warn me that he had been doing similar pace, meaning I could've afforded to preserve tyres.

Finally, the gearbox problem reared its head again. The issues, as they did in Monza in the first race, weren't that troublesome, but the shifts did add up to a loss of anywherefrom one to three tenths over a lap. Add that together and you get the three seconds that we probably needed to get this win.

With seven laps to go, the tyres started to run out, and in a few laps they were gone. Antonio closed in and started to attack.

I tried to defend as well as I could, even though there probably wasn't much of a point. But I didn't want to just give up so I tried my best to make his life harder. After all, you never know what will happen afterwards – as the F1 race showed, you have to hold on for as long as you can.

He did pass me after all, but I was happy enough as we finished second and were challenging for victory until the end. After all the practice troubles, that wasn't so bad at all.

Out of the title picture

There isn't much to say about the Sunday race. It was a good start, but not the optimal line through turn 2, so there was basically no position gain.

And, soon enough, the gearbox problems began again, and they were major this time. I was losing one spot after another, the shifts becoming slower and slower, then going through intermittently. And then it just got stuck. I was moving out of the way to not cause any trouble and when I found myself last, we decided to take to the pits.

Obviously, we still don't have an answer for what happened. After Monza, virtually everything that could be changed was changed, like the car was being prepared for a new season. But the problems came back. Electronics can be weird sometimes.

I stopped six times in the second race and we changed something each time – upon which I'd head back out, and the gearbox would work for a couple of corners. And then back at it – slow shifts, missing shifts and being stuck in gear. It was exactly like Monza, with minor issues on Saturday and massive issues on Sunday.

So that was the end of our title hopes, which wasn't a massive surprise. When problems started to arrive one after another, it became clear that this wasn't going to be the year.

And it's quite frustrating. Given how many hurdles we've had to jump this season, how many issues we've had to overcome, we did a good job. If only we could restart the season and try not to make the mistakes that were made and try to avoid the issues we ran into – well, I won't say we would've definitely won, but we wouldn't have been that far off heading into Abu Dhabi. As it stands, we're out of the top three and that's all there is to say about that.

It's now almost a two-month wait until the conclusion of the season at Yas Marina. We'll go there with the mindset as we've had in all the other races of this campaign – and we'll try to win again.