Williams F1 has confirmed that Pastor Maldonado will race for the AT&T Williams team next season, as team-mate to Rubens Barrichello. The GP2 Champion comes to the team with a substantial financial package from Venezuela. Rumours have suggested that this may be as high as $20 million, with the name most likely to be on the car being the national oil company PDVSA.
The 25-year-old spent four years in GP2 and dominated this year. He has since completed 1,200 miles of F1 testing with Williams and HRT. He will make his debut in the team’s 2011 race car, the Williams Cosworth FW33, in February’s winter test programme.
“I feel very privileged that Williams has selected me as one of their race drivers,” Maldonado said. “It is a great way to end what has already been an amazing year for me. I tested with the team in Abu Dhabi, but can’t wait to start working with everyone properly to be in the best possible shape going into next year. I will be doing my best over the winter to prepare myself, and I know the team will be working hard to ensure a successful season. 2011 will be the first time in nearly 30 years that a Venezuelan has driven a Formula 1 car so I will be looking to get some good results in return for the support my country has given me to help get me to this position today.”
Thus far there have been two Venezuelan F1 drivers. The first was Italian-born Ettore Chimeri, who raced in one event, the Argentine GP in February 1960, at the wheel of a privately Maserati 250F. He failed to finish the race. Two weeks later he was killed while practicing for the Gran Premio Libertad sports car race at Camp Freedom, near Havana, in Cuba. His Ferrari 250TR went through the barriers and flew 150 ft into a ravine. The second Venezuelan F1 driver was former motorcycle World Champion Johnny Cecotto, who beat Giacomo Agostini to the 1975 350cc World Championship. He quit bike racing at the end of 1980 and moved to Formula 2 with Minardi, moving on to the March factory team, finishing runner-up in the European Championship in 1982. He made his F1 debut with Theodore in 1983 and scored a point in his second Grand Prix. In 1984 he moved up to Toleman, where he was Ayrton Senna’s team-mate. He crashed during qualifying for the British GP at Brands Hatch and suffered serious leg injuries, which ended his F1 career, but he went on to have a distinguished career in touring cars, winning the 1987 James Hardie 1000 at Mount Panorama, although the car was later disqualified. Cecotto won the Italian Touring Car Championship in 1989 and competed in the DTM until 1992, finishing runner-up in 1990. In 1994 and 1998 he won the German Super Tourenwagen Cup and in 2001 and 2002 won the German V8Star Championship.
Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about Williams taking Maldonado.
Plenty of people have been slagging off Williams saying they’re now taking pay drivers etc etc.
But it’s not as though Maldonado is Giovanni Lavaggi or Jean-Denis Delatraz. The guy is GP2 champion!
Also, Williams have taken guys with funding in the recent past. Toyota-backed Kazuki Nakajima would have got nowhere near a seat at Grove had he not come with the significant advantage of bring free engines.
For sure Hulkenberg would have been the better bet in terms of pure ability, but when the team has RBS, Philips and a host of other sponsors heading for the door what else can they do to balance the books?
It’s a business after all.
Simon B,
I agree, but this is Williams we are talking about here…
This confirms GP2 as the ladder to F1, all the latest winners, bar Pantano, got a seat in the end.
Btw, Joe, what went wrong with him?
Paolo,
No money
It also took him a number of years to win the GP2. I feel it is a shame that Williams are reduced to pay drivers. Lost a lot of respect for them. I hope he doesnt turn out to be as expensive as Petrov.
Let’s hope for Frank Williams’ sake that he’s better than PDVSA’s other protege Milka Duno. Regularly so p*** poor that race control have to black flag her.
As Danica Patrick once said ‘it’s not my fault you’re slow’ … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXUd6n1Vti8
Yea exactly..its Williams, who havnt done anything of note since JPM left them on a high winning in Interlagos in 04.They have now got rid of their best hope,the Hulk!Williams RIP!
So is Hulkenberg’s contract definitively at an end? Or can Williams still place him with HRT for a year on the promise of a drive next year or in 2012?
Joe,
your source’s tip turned out to be accurate – well done!
Williams decline looks not dissimilar to Lotus’
It’s a pity it’s a business as it’s sad for F1 fans, Williams and Hulkenberg. I hope he gets the opportunity to drive for a winning team sooner rather than later.
Hulkenberg would be a good team mate for Kubica.
Pat and Frank keeping an eye on the pension fund that’s all.
As a long time Williams fan, I’m hugely disappointed and I do feel most of this is down to Adam Parr.
The guy is all about business and accounts, doesn’t care about racing aspect of the job imo…Frank and Patrcik did it with nakajima, but hey I believe Parr has been brought in to avoid Williams going for pay drivers =/
After a very long time, Williams was going to have a decent line up if hulk was going to stay…that died too.
[...] angle. There have been two favourites: that he’s Venezuelan, and the last time there was a Venezuelan in Formula 1, Maldonado wasn’t born; and that he brings a lot of sponsorship money with him. [...]
“Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about Williams taking Maldonado.”
Answer: $ 60 mil. for two year from PDVSA
I agree with Simon B above. Maldonado is no muppet. You don’t win the GP2 title and a string of races along the way by accident. It took him four years but he was always competitive and a race winner from his first year.
On the subject of money – Williams are a race team but also a business and like any business if they don’t watch their bottom line they will fail. They’ve already said they wanted to keep Hulkenberg but their financial situation clearly forced their hand. I think they’ve done well to get a good driver who comes with money rather than another Nakajima-type backmaker who was well connected but basically a waste of space. Maldonado might not set the world on fire but I expect him to be scoring points and a solid number two to Barrichello.
@Antiriad – Williams and Lotus are planets apart. Lotus failed completely, disappeared for over a decade and only recently reappeared as a totally different entity with only the name remaining.
For one thing I doubt if Bernie would allow Williams to fail. They are the third most successful team in F1′s history. They might be at a low point relative to their past but they have a lot going on behind the scenes. Strong links to the Volkswagen Group and Qatar. More importantly they are continuing to operate under their own steam and have diversified their business well to include other revenue channels.
This could have been a reply to Antiriad, but that’s been done.
We got KERS back, coming season, and Williams are so hot on this I believe they killed a few years in the F1 game.
Also, you got the adjustable rear wing, which is going to be very interesting in terms of HP boost + lower downforce. But road car dev (Porsche, Hulkenberg mucking about the Nord) is all about standing weight. Last F1 KERS was under refuelling. Flywheel makes more sense under load, gets integrated better with the drive chain, compared with translating via electrical store, such as Ferrari did, scolding Kimi’s feet, Williams have the time in the right thing.
I really don’t know about Maldonado, but young fresh and able to pay his way sounds very positive.
I felt like all season I was watching MS just make sure he came home in front RB (and some interesting incidents there) so this’ll be fun, hopefully.
If Williams was really messing up, all the time since they made podiums regular, they’d be long gone. It doesn’t take that long if you look the wrong way.
– j
People talk about Maldonado has a nobody, the guy won GP2, he didnt won before because of too hot blood which brought silly mistakes.
Frank probably didn’t have much choice. But now he is in F1 Maldonado deserves some time to adjust. We’ll see what happens.
I just hope that Hulkenberg finds a new seat (Force India??).
PDVSA: People’s Dispensary for Very Sick Animals?
Morning to all.
Darren,
“I feel it is a shame that Williams are reduced to pay drivers.”
Rot. At so many levels.
How much is Santander worth to SF between 2010 and ’15?
(even if it’s paying off Philip Morris still)
. . .
Calin,
PDVSA must be being generous with tomorrow’s jam, with the Chinese paying top whack for assets out there:)
(CNOOC / Bridas, in March, this week CNOOC / Pan American for even more. As I understand it, Argentine fields ae some of the least efficient because of perennial meddling. Chavez couldn’t care to fix that, he wants nuclear, presumably so he can hock the oil for more dictatorial socialism. Right now, for small N plants, China has better designs, because Europe did only huge scale, and the US gave up. Hmmm. Bet there’ll be a big delegation at the A-Pac-Rim races. Heck, it’s only govvy money. What a paymaster, though!)
– j
Infinitely better than reading my speculation about Chavez / PDVSA,
search for “True Stories: Red Oil”, which was some 4 years in the making.
This is almost as good as looking back at the Williams which briefly bore the family name of a prominent Saudi family who have, ahh, something of a black sheep problem.
John,
I’m sure Williams is using a battery KERS next year, not the flywheel device.
steve t
I am sure you are right
Don’t forget that Ernesto ‘EJ’ Viso ran as third driver for MF1 at Friday practice in Brazil a few years ago. He is Venezuelan and now races with PDVSA backing in IndyCar. Milka uses CITGO branding on her moving chicane.
Yes Patrick head announced it will be a battery KERS for next season…Flywheel is still under test for other uses and with a look to new regulations of engines, 1.4l should let the use of that device.
It’s a shame that the once all conquering Williams squad have been reduced to taking pay drivers but the teams survival must come first.
People have rightly pointed out that Maldonado is the GP2 champion but winning lower formulae has allways been a quastion of opposition, typically there will only be 1 or 2 superstars per generation and if neither of them happen to be in a particular championship then the door is open for an ordinary driver to win it. Remember that those superstars will only spend one year in each lower formula before moving up towards F1. The problem for the ordinary drivers is, when these superstars get to F1 they stay there, and so the ordinary driver will then have to compete against several generations of superstars and quickly be found out.
Having a lot of backing does not mean a driver isn’t good, rather if he was really good then he wouldn’t need all that backing.
Paolo and Joe
Wasn’t there another problem for Pantano? That he had already had a half season with Jordan in 2004, been replaced by Timo Glock who showed him up.
At twenty eight, if I remember correctly, at the time of his GP2 championship, he might also have been thought to be too old to start an F1 career.
Too old at twenty eight!!
Can you believe it?
I don’t think there is a non pay driver on the grid??
All drivers have some sponsorship and the team will obviously benefit. It is the amount which makes people think he can’t be good if he has to bring that large sum with him.
Maybe his manager got lucky while asking for sponsorship and the oil company thought “we could do with writing off $20m”.
I’m pretty sure sponsors have a say what drivers they want in the team which promotes their name, Alonso + Santander, So this makes him a pay driver.
All sponsorship deals have pro’s and cons, why would PDVSA want another nationality promoting their product.
People should stop knocking Williams for their choice, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of team owners wishing they had got him. He just won the GP2, so he deserves the opportunity to show himself. I don’t think Nico’s year was great and I am surprised by how many people praise him, yes he was fast at times, but he’s not a Schumacher, Lewis or Alonso, they got in a F1 car and were straight away on the pace or faster than their team mate.
Why would Williams pay someone when they could get someone as good or near as who has some funding to progress the team and the drivers. Its a no brainer! The driver makes little difference compared to the development of the car and Williams has Rubens to help this guy.
Sorry for the long post……..
I’d much prefer to see Williams with a half-decent pay driver on the grd next year than see a gap… Sad though it is, the best drivers won’t always get to F1, and even if they do, they won’t always get the best seat. From the stupidly rich pool, Maldonaldo is rather good. I’d be surprised if someone of Hulkenburg’s skill isn’t on the grid next year, but this is F1 after all…
Pretty sure I read somewhere (might even have been their own website) that Williams are going to use an electronic kers, which makes sense as it’s more of a proven technology on the race track. However, I hope they keep working on the flywheel as i remember listening to a sidepodcast from early 2009 when it was discussed with some techy people and the potential was huge.
Cecotto didn’t win Bathurst in 1987, although he scored the maximum WTCC points being the highest finishing registered car…
Joe, Steve T,
yup.
got that one mixed up.
But maybe this makes what i said a bit clearer:
“Like many others’ approach to the KERS challenge, it uses a motor / generator connected to the transmission and an electrical control unit to manage the power to and from it. The difference, however, is rather than storing the energy in batteries, or ultracapacitors, on this system it is used to spin a flywheel as a means of storage.”
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/allarticles/311644/williams-f1-kers-explained.html
Joe, did my comment on “The Renault situation” slip through the net?
– j
Off topic mainly, but these are good light relief:
Williams sponsored by “Axis Of Mischief!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B040D20101202
but not as good as this, which really is OT, but what the heck:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,732370,00.html
I am SO going to be in Sochi for that inaugural race!
– j
[...] Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/williams-f1-confirms-maldonado/ [...]
[...] Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/williams-f1-confirms-maldonado/ [...]
Joe,
Back to this one again, after reading some of the Wikileaks and also Chavez publicly announcing they’re paying “a lot of money” for Maldonado’s ride….
I guess there was no other option, but getting into bed with PDVSA & Chavez doesn’t seem like a good thing at the moment; it’s hardly going to attract blue chip companies to come on board; and what about when he wants to come & watch the Monaco GP???
Steve