 |
| Maldonado after his Friday practice crash in Spa 2015 |
I didn't follow GP2 that much so I didn't know too much about him when he arrived at Williams in 2011 after being GP2 champion.
At first, he was the one who forced Nico Hülkenberg out of his Williams cockpit. The main reason: His big sponsorship from Venezuela.
But then came the race in Monaco 2011: There was a crash between Hamilton, Petrov and Buemi which caused a red flag just a few laps before the end of the race. And Maldonado made it up to P6 in an inferior Williams. That was the first time I really noticed him. I also felt bad for him after the race was restarted and Hamilton pushed him out in the first corner. There were lots of points possible for him and when you look at the standings of that season: He only scored one point in the whole season!
In the next season it looked a lot better for Williams. The car was much faster and also very competitive on some occasions due to the Pirelli tyres which caused lots of different scenarios in 2012. But Maldonado also threw away many points in that season - starting with the first race where he crashed into a wall while following Alonso.
But his highlight was clearly the Grand Prix of Spain in Barcelona. He inherited the Pole Position from Hamilton and won the race there ahead a certain Fernando Alonso. But the thing is we never saw such moments of glory again. In the following race in Monaco he faced reality: He caused a crash with Perez in Qualifying and didn't even make the first lap because he ran into a HRT, damaged his front wing and stopped on track.
In the following eight races he also wouldn't score any more points at all. Maybe worth to mention: In Spa Maldonado was qualified at sixth position, but after a jump start he got innocently involved in the big crash caused by Romain Grosjean.
Later in the season he scored a few further points, but there was a lot more possible throughout 2012. And by that time he became the victim of many jokes especially with pictures in social media. Things like 'Maldonado arrived in Monaco' with a crashed boat or even websites like hasmaldonadocrashedtoday.com.
In 2013 he only scored one point with another inferior Williams. I remember being at the race in Spa where he managed to crash into both Force Indias in the final chicane. And then he made a bad choice in terms of competitiveness for the 2014 season.
He switched to Lotus which were strong by the end of 2013, but they fell far behind. And Williams became really strong with their new Mercedes engines. Maldonado only scored two points and seemed to be obligated to entertain the audience with incidents. The heaviest one was clearly the crash with Esteban Gutierrez in Bahrain which caused a somersault of the Sauber.
In 2015 Lotus switched to Mercedes engines which made them stronger than in the previous year. But Maldonado was especially in the first half of the season involved in many incidents, but in the end of the season he even showed some consistency. He managed to score points in four out of five races - something he never did in Formula One before.
At the free practice session on Friday in Belgium I was pretty close where he crashed into the wall. I saw people running and I followed them. There was a crashed Lotus and it seemed that it could only be him...
His last race was in Abu Dhabi where Alonso crashed into him. That time he had no fault, but that was it. It was planned to continue in 2016 to race for the renamed Renault team, but financial problems of his sponsor forced him out of the cockpit. He plans to return in 2017.
Conclusion
And of course he's fast, he showed it with his only win in 2012. He managed something others will take years without achieving that.
But there's this lack of consistency, he got involved in many incidents and received lots of penalties. That's what made him a great character in Formula One - and not only by having this reputation.
Let's hope we see him return next or even within this season.
No comments:
Post a Comment