Lotus F1 Team's Pastor Maldonado eyeing first 2015 points in Monaco

Maldonado has been plagued by a combination of misfortune and mistakes so far this year, to such an extent that other than McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, and Manor pair Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi, he is the only one yet to finish in the top 10.

In the last race in Spain, Maldonado was involved in a minor collision with team-mate Romain Grosjean that damaged the rear wing on his car, playing its part in him finishing 12th, a place behind the Frenchman.

Lotus: Pastor Maldonado has to earn his Formula 1 drive on merit

Ahead of F1's blue-riband event around the streets of the Principality on Sunday, Maldonado said: "I feel I can score some points, hopefully.

"It's not been the best of moments for me this season, starting from the first race through to the last.

"I've been trying do my best, but there has always been something happening.

"But this is racing. I just have to be quite strong, and as soon as it passes it will be quite fun again because the potential is there."

Maldonado has a reasonable record around Monaco in lower formulae - with a pair of GP2 wins and second places - although in F1 he has yet to officially see the chequered flag.

In 2011 Maldonado was classified 18th, but a collision with Lewis Hamilton on lap 74 of 78 resulted in him retiring with broken front suspension on his Williams.

Further crashes followed 2012 and 2013, while last year Maldonado stalled on the grid and failed to start.

Despite such travails, an optimistic Maldonado said: "It's a fantastic track, I really like it.

"I try to be quite brave there, and in the past I've been quite good.

"Hopefully I can qualify the car in a better position. As we all know qualifying is very important there.

"We can play with the strategy, which is quite good, because as we have shown this year we've [got] good pace and we've been good on our tyres with degradation."

Maldonado feels the switch to the softer compounds this weekend - with Pirelli using its new super-soft for the first time alongside the soft compound- should benefit Lotus.

"A lot will depend on the warm-up of the tyres because we have struggled a lot this year, especially when the compounds are on the hard side," said Maldonado.

"But I am expecting to be a bit more competitive in qualifying around Monaco because the compounds will be softer.

"It's still not easy to warm up the tyres because it is a short track, with not a lot of high-speed corners, but our car does work much better with the soft compounds."