If ever there was a partnership awash with an undercurrent of doubt, it is surely the upcoming combination of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado at Lotus. It stirs the phew-factor!!

Their history of spats on and off track and open dislike of each other will require urgent control if the team are to continue the admirable progress they showed so surprisingly this last season. Team manager Eric Boullier will need to head a peace-keeping force to smooth the underlying, long-standing friction between the two drivers and ensure his outfit does not self-destruct.

Their troubled times go back to their days racing in the GP2 under-class and overlapped into their later moves into the big time of Formula One.

Grosjean, mercifully, thanks to the attention and guidance of a psychologist, plus the responsibility of marriage and a baby, appears to have reformed and he has not been the bad boy that almost brought his grand prix career to an abrupt end leading up the start of the 2013 season.

He had been branded a “first lap nutcase,” by Red Bull’s Mark Webber, just one of his victims, but he got his irritating and dangerous act together last season with his vast potential unleashed in a series of eye-opening performances that rendered his outrageously neglectful driving merely a bad memory.

Venezuelan Maldonado, who bought his Lotus seat with around $40 million (Dh147.12 million) backing from an oil company back home, is another culprit, guilty of brashness and thoughtless actions even in the wheel-to-wheel melees that could spell death or injury. He has never recaptured the dash and control that earned him his only victory, the Spanish Grand Prix in 2012.

Countless crashes, some horrendously careless, have instead marred his three-year Williams career. Boullier managed with patience and understanding to curtail Grosjean’s wildness and rescued the Frenchman’s faltering career when it was floundering and penalty-ridden to the point of embarrassment for both driver and team.

Whether he can do the same with Maldonado and curb his madness at 200mph is another matter. The real fascination is going to be how he will enforce a kinship between his drivers. I don’t think it will happen. And Grosjean, revealing that his now-exited partner, gloomy Finn Kimi Raikkonen only spoke to him once in two years, is therefore well-used to the stand-offs and sullen silences of a teammate.

It is a good job they are not in an athletics relay team — they wouldn’t hand over the baton.

- The author is a motorsports expert based in the UK.