Abu Dhabi: Lotus’ Romain Grosjean has rated the 2012 Formula One season as the toughest year of his career following a spate of incidents that have seen him branded “a first lap nutcase” by Red Bull’s Mark Webber.

The 26-year-old Frenchman, who is currently eighth in the driver’s standings, suffered the unenviable honour of being the first F1 driver in 18-years to be handed a one race ban, after causing a multicar pile-up at Spa in September.

Having been suspended for the following Grand Prix in Italy, a supposedly reformed Grosjean then ran Webber off the track just one race later in Japan last month, prompting a barrage of criticism from the Australian.

It’s thrown a struggling F1 career into further disarray. This season was meant to have been Grosjean’s first full year in F1, following two test drive tenures with Renault and Lotus in 2008 and 2011, and a half season in 2009 standing in for Nelson Piquet Junior.

Besides the setbacks he has still recorded three podiums this season, with two third place finishes in Bahrain and Hungary and a second place finish in Canada. “There have been some ups and downs but I’m learning a lot,” Grosjean told Gulf News. “Professionally this has been the toughest season of my life. But I’ve learnt a lot and I hope I can use it in the future.

“I know I made a mistake and I admit I still need to improve in some areas. I’m working on myself with people around me who can help. But I don’t think it’s very interesting or very helpful for me to read the criticisms [in the press],” said Grosjean.

“There have been some issues in the first lap of many races,” he added. “I just need to understand why and where I was taking the wrong decision at the start. I think we understand it now and we are working on it. That is mainly what I want to improve for the future.”

“This is the only thing I want to change because otherwise my races are perfect and in qualifying we’ve been in Q3 14 times out of the 16. I’ll improve a lot over my career but Formula One is highly demanding so this is why I say this is my toughest one,” said the GP2 and F3 graduate.

Webber said of Grosjean after the Japan incident: “I haven’t obviously seen what happened at the start but the guys confirmed it was the first lap nutcase again Grosjean.

“The rest of us are trying to fight for some decent results each weekend but he is trying to get to the third corner as fast as he can at every race. It makes it frustrating because a few big guys probably suffered from that and maybe he needs another holiday [in reference to his one-race ban].”

Webber added: “He needs to have a look at himself, it was completely his fault. How many mistakes can you make, how many times can you make the same error? First lap incidents… yeah… it’s quite embarrassing at this level for him.”