Perhaps the key moments of 2004 came at the end of the year, however, when he finished fifth in a one-off outing in the Renault V6 Eurocup at Spa, and was then offered the chance to test a Minardi F1 car at Misano. This time, he swept to the Italian title on the back of eight wins, and scooped another couple of top spots in Europe, albeit only on the way to eighth overall.
PASTOR MALDONADO SERIES
With no notable single-seater classes running in his homeland, Maldonado chose Europe over South America when it came to moving on up, initially to tackle the UK's Formula Renault Winter Series in 2000, before returning in 2003 to join Cram Competition for the Italian national championship.īuoyed by three podium finishes and seventh overall, he set his sights a little higher, adding a Eurocup programme to another year in Italy, again with Cram. With little to gain by remaining in Venezuela, he ventured over to Europe to take on the best the world had to offer, but failed to achieve the same level of success until he made the move to car racing several years down the line. The early start - he made his regional junior debut at just seven - stood him in good stead, and he was already winning regional and national titles before he was a teenager. Surrounded by a motorsport-mad family, and with the nearest kart track just a couple of miles away, it was perhaps unsurprising that the young Maldonado developed an interest in the sport. But we were also very fast in the race before and after.Venezuela is not renowned as a hot-bed of international motor racing talent, but Pastor Maldonado aims to buck the trend and be the first since Johnny Cecotto to make a mark on F1. Then everyone copied it and Williams fell behind again. The Austrian added: “That is a big issue now, the copying issue par excellence in Formula 1 with Racing Point and Mercedes. Wood then “improved the brake cooling relatively quickly” – with great success. “We stood on the track and talked about the volume flow of the air that goes through the rim and always cools the tyre. It was Ed Wood, who was then the chief designer, and me. “The car was very fast because as a team we were the first to understand that we had to heat the front tyre over the rim.
And the fire was dangerous, catastrophic. “I was still with the team and those were the times when Toto Wolff was with Williams. “Definitely not,” said Wurz, who is now chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, quoted by when asked about the conspiracy.
PASTOR MALDONADO HOW TO
Get your hands on the official Williams 2020 collection via the Formula 1 storeīut Wurz, who had driven in 69 F1 races and was working as a driver consultant to Williams at the time, has insisted there was nothing sinister and that the team had merely maximised how to extract the most out of Maldonado’s car technically. There were claims that F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone had bent the rules to grant Sir Frank a belated birthday present – a theory fuelled by a fire that broke out in the Williams garage afterwards that burned lots of equipment, including tyres, leading to accusations that the ‘evidence’ had been destroyed.
PASTOR MALDONADO FULL
It was the only time Maldonado would ever finish on the podium in five full F1 seasons, his next best result being P5 in Abu Dhabi towards the end of that 2012 campaign.Ĭonspiracy theories began to circulate about why Maldonado had been so competitive on a one-off basis, especially as his Williams team-mate Bruno Senna had qualified in P17 before crashing out of the race after being hit from behind by Michael Schumacher. Maldonado was in his second year with Williams and arrived at the Circuit de Catalunya in May 2012 having never previously finished higher than eighth in a Formula 1 race.īut just under a month after team owner Sir Frank Williams had turned 70, the Venezuelan driver started from pole position after Lewis Hamilton had been put to the back of the grid for running out of fuel at the end of qualifying – and Maldonado went on to win the race. Alex Wurz has shot down a conspiracy theory surrounding one of F1’s biggest shock results of the past decade – Pastor Maldonado’s Spanish Grand Prix victory in 2012.
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