Pastor Maldonado pleased to prove he can race cleanly at Singapore

The Venezuelan qualified on the front row and ran strongly in the race, only for badly-timed safety cars and ultimately a hydraulic leak to ruin his chances of a good result.

But after a run of on-track incidents in the Monaco, European, British, Hungarian and Belgian grand prix weekends, Maldonado believes that his drive in Singapore, coming off the back of a clean run to 11th in Italy two weeks before, is a positive.

"Yes," he told AUTOSPORT when asked if he is happy to have shown he can race cleanly.

"To be honest, I was living in a bad moment and I was involved in some accidents and it's difficult to say why.

"I've showed everyone that I can race well and be competitive and clean. It was a frustrating race, but at the same time I'm happy because of the pace that we showed, especially at the beginning."

Maldonado has not scored a point since his victory in the Spanish Grand Prix in May and has only one other points finish this season.

He is certain that the Williams has the pace to score heavily in the remaining six races of the season provided that it can end its run of misfortune.

"We have good potential," he said. "Maybe we don't have the best car all the way through the race, but we are always trying to improve.

"In Singapore, we had a great opportunity to be on the podium, but that's racing. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.

"We are living in some bad moments but we need to look forward. There are still races to go and we can recover. It's important to be calm."