It turned out to be a winning combination and he bested Sergio Perez (another driver with considerable backing from his home country) and the late Jules Bianchi to win the title at a canter. GP2 title success finally came with RapaxĪt the eleventh hour, his old race engineer came up with a proposal that saw the pair reunite and re-enter GP2 with the Italian Rapax team. Maldonado claimed yet another Monaco win, but it was team-mate Nico Hülkenberg who took the title and Maldonado was ejected from the team. This time with the much-fancied ART team, but things didn’t quite work out. The money would only be forthcoming if he secured the second tier title – so back to GP2 it was. On to 2008 and the Venezuelan lost out in a narrow title fight, finishing fifth just four points behind second-placed Bruno Senna, and 16 short of series winner Giorgio Pantano.Īt this point, the only way to land one of the few remaining seats at motor sport’s top table was with considerable funds and despite the government backing, Maldonado still didn’t have enough cash. What are these points? “That’s top secret!” “I’ve been always taking the risk into the points in the track and that’s it.” But at these points, if you do a little mistake, you will crash the car. “There are only two or three points when you need to really risk and then the rest of the track you just manage. Why so successful on the ultimate street circuit? “Big balls!” he replies emphatically. He won in his first season (at Monte Carlo of course) before a cycling accident ruled him out for the rest of the season. We worked really hard to find some support over there.Įventually, branding came in the form of state oil firm PDVSA and Visit Venezuela, and Maldonado made the step up to GP2 in 2007. “It was really difficult at the moment in my country, because this sport was not very popular,” he says. “It’s not every day a president of your country calls you and says, ‘Congratulations!'” Fifteen years since the last Venezuelan, Johnny Cecotto, raced in Formula 1, Maldonado found himself selling his dream to unenthused sponsors. He wasn’t simply handed the funds, however. Recognising his talent after the championship near-miss, the Venezuelan government began supporting his bid for the top. In spite of Maldonado’s reputation as a pranger, he’s a Principality specialist, taking his first Monaco win that year. He would have won the 2006 Renault 3.5 championship but for losing a race win to a technical infringement. He won there too, immediately taking the Formula Renault 2.0 Italy Winter Cup before winning the full series the following season. Monaco specialist: Maldonado celebrates ’07 GP2 win, but won’t reveal the secret to his speed thereĪ nascent European career in single-seaters beckoned on the back of domestic karting success. “I dominated it, I owned everything, all pole positions, every single race – everything,” he says. His winning habit soon took him beyond his home country to his first international race, in Colombia. The passion was driving the car, but behind driving the car was always the main purpose on the podium, especially in the middle of the podium.” “I started to get in love with the victories,” he says. “All the people around me started to hate me when I started to race, because I won against guys who were three, four years older than me.”Ī growing silverware collection was plenty of consolation for the young Maldonado. With victory came the first of the criticism. It was very tough, really painful at the beginning, but I was immediately so quick, I think I won my third or fourth race in go-karts.” “I was racing with guys 10 or 11-years-old. “It was very difficult for myself to get to the top because I needed to learn.” “I dominated it, I owned everything, all pole positions, every single race” He never drove a race or a racecar in his life,” says Maldonado, speaking via Zoom from his Monaco home. “Step by step, grain by grain, I built my mountain,” says the Venezuelan son of a car dealer, who dreamt of racing for years before he was let loose on a local karting track, not long after his seventh birthday. Now a sports car racer after five seasons of F1 with Williams and Lotus, Maldonado has grown used to the attitude which he says has dogged him since his very first kart races in Venezuela, despite a slog to get to the top of the racing world. “When I start a race, I start a race just to win,” says Maldonado. But not to the driver at the centre of it all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |