COOPER: Maldonado Deserves Credit

Formula 1

COOPER: Maldonado Deserves Credit

Pastor Maldonado notched an impressive victory in the Spanish GP, and could impress again in Monaco...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted May 22, 2012 Balen (BEL)

Pastor Maldonado celebrates his win in the Spanish GP. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

As we head to Monaco, just about the only thing we can predict with any certainty about next weekend is that Michael Schumacher won’t be starting from the first five places on the grid, the former World Champion having picked up a penalty for pushing Bruno Senna off the road in the Spanish GP.

In normal circumstances, that would have been a big story, but so much happened in Barcelona – the Lewis Hamilton qualifying saga and Pastor Maldonado’s shocking win for Williams followed by the fire in the team garage – that Schumacher’s transgression went almost unnoticed.

In a season of a surprises, Spain really was an extraordinary race, and no one, even the most optimistic Williams insiders, could have predicted that their man would win the race, and in such convincing style. Of course, he had a dose of luck when Hamilton was penalized, but he did the rest himself, beating Fernando Alonso and everyone else in a straight fight.

Maldonado has been unfairly categorized as a pay driver, but then few make it into the sport these days without backing of some sort, whether it be pure sponsorship or the patronage of Red Bull or a manufacturer.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that while he is only at the start of his second F1 season, Maldonado has a huge amount of experience, and he’s a guy who is used to winning. At 27, he’s a lot older than most comingmen.

Indeed, he was in the Renault V6 series – in effect a step away from F1 – as long ago as 2004. The following year he even tested a Minardi.

His rollercoaster road to the top included an infamous WSR incident at Monaco where he didn’t heed yellow flags and put a marshal in hospital. That cost him a lot of credibility and ultimately his place as a protégé of Flavio Briatore on the Renault Driver Development scheme, which included the likes of Heikki Kovalainen and Lucas di Grassi.

His career survived that blow, and he completed his education with four years in GP2, and while it took him a long time to do, he finally won the title in 2010. It was on the back of that success that his huge PDVSA backing landed him the Williams drive last season.

He didn’t have much chance to show his potential last year, but he did enough to, in effect, finish the career of teammate Rubens Barrichello. And, he impressed in Monaco, a track where (the aforementioned crash aside) he had always shone, and which masked the inadequacies of his car. Alas, his race ended with a shove from Hamilton that left him in the wall at Ste Devote.

This year started with a brilliant showing in Australia, where he was heading for sixth place until a needless last-lap crash when he got a little excited while chasing Alonso. It was an expensive mistake in terms of priceless points lost for Williams, but he’s been forgiven now. His drive in Barcelona was quite superb, under the most intense pressure.

One man who rates Maldonado highly is Alex Wurz, who this year has been engaged by Williams to mentor the team’s drivers, both of whom are relatively lacking in F1 experience. The Austrian was delighted to see the team put in such a great performance.

“For Williams, it was very emotional on Frank’s 70th birthday,” he says, referring to team owner Frank Williams. “And after such a drastic and terrible season last year, to come back strongly is great. The cool of the engineers to make such an aggressive strategy – I was peeing my pants, because it was really aggressive, and at the end of the race he could go back to P4. At this stage, you didn’t know. But it was worth the gamble, and Pastor managed the tires just as you would learn in school!”

Pastor Maldonado is in his second Formula One season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Wurz made some interesting observations about the Venezuelan, who is far from the wild man that some perceive him to be. Indeed, Alex says he has the trait that truly top drivers share – the ability to multi-task, in other words drive quickly while still having the capacity to think about what’s going on around.

“I said even before the race, he’s someone who has an extremely high assessment of other things while driving. He can assess so many things. He uses weight transfer and steering quite aggressively. I still want to tune it out a little bit, but he’s much neater than last year. He’s become really efficient. It’s all down to this talent of super fast processing. He’s so fast in assessing, and that’s really impressive.

“He’s arriving from the emotional side, but we’re working hard to make it the rational side. Barcelona was 100 percent rational driving, and that’s exactly what you have to have to be a winner.”

So what exactly has Alex being doing for him?

“It’s just the information that you deliver, and at the right time, when it’s useful for him, he will take it up," Wurz said. "If it’s not useful, he will ignore the comments! It’s down to me to give quality comments, but it’s not about me. The teamwork together was absolutely stunning; they were really on the case.”

Given Maldonado’s impressive performance last year, it’s going to be fascinating to see if he can maintain his frontrunning form in Monaco. But as we’ve seen, things are changing by the weekend this year, and the special nature of the track – plus the seasonal debut of Pirelli’s supersoft tires – mean that it’s wide open.

“You know, this season we’ve had five different winners from five different teams,” says Wurz. “So the first who can do it two times will put their average very high! Let’s wait and see.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED