F1 Fanatic

Most of us are impressed by rookie seasons of Perez, di Resta and Ricciardo, and I think the majority agrees that D’Ambrosio has been doing a solid job, but nothing spectacular. But when it comes to Pastor Maldonado, I think he’s incredibly hard to rate.

In 2009 GP2 season he was beaten by a rookie Nico Hulkenberg, who won the title and scored around three times as many points as him. Maldonado went on to win the title in 2010, when the best drivers from the series left. Then Hulkenberg did a good job at Williams, improving along the way, getting the awesome pole position in Interlagos and performing well at some races, notably Hungaroring, Valencia and Monza. He was dropped at the end of the season and replaced by no other than Maldonado, mostly because of the money.

Many people hated him for that, though I think it’s a bit unfair – who would have said no to such an opportunity? But, combined with other things he’s done, for me he’s easily the least likeable driver in the field. But how good is he? Hard to compare but I think he’s doing a similar job to Barrichello, who, we must not forget, was able to beat Schumacher on many an occasion and was able to finish the championship not far behind Button in 2009. Curiously, Barrichello says he’s driving better than ever, so by that logic Maldonado must be the new Schumacher :O

Anyway, I’ve wandered off a bit, but that’s my question: how good is Maldonado? A talent that might win a title some year, a solid midfield driver or not worthy of an f1 drive? I honestly can’t say.

I’ve seen others rate him as the worst driver on the grid, but I think that is unfair. He has matched up against Barrichello fairly well. Maldonado would have more points if he finished in Monaco, also Barrichello scored his points in races of high attrition. The Williams is absolutely terrible which makes rating him quite difficult, but for now I would say he deserves a place in Formula One. However I haven’t yet seen anything to suggest he could have a highly successful career yet.

The qualifying battle is 9-7 in favour of Barrichello, whioch doesn’t reflect too badly on Maldonado. He was indeed unlucky to be rammed out of a great chunk of points at Monaco, but didn’t paint himself in a good light with his shocking antics in Spa qualifying. I’d say he could do with a second season in the Williams to see if he can really cut it.

I will be honest and say that I dont think he deserves a race seat. He has had a lot of collisions and his consistency is disappointing. I wasnt a fan of Hulkenburg but I must admit that I wish he had stayed.

Did Hulkenberg not absolutely demolish him in their time as teammates? Both were at ART GP2 in 2009 season.

Hulk won the championship with 100 points and Pastor had 36 points

@prisoner-monkeys Where did you hear that about Hulkenberg refusing to find sponsorships? I haven’t heard about it before :O

And, while you make a good point about GP2 form not being representative of someone’s talent and ability to perform in F1, I disagree about Grosjean struggling. He came into F1 with no testing, in the middle of a season, in a poor car against Fernando Alonso. He did just fine in comparison, especially given that we all know how much Alonso can get from a struggling car.

Where did you hear that about Hulkenberg refusing to find sponsorships?

I’m pretty sure it was all over Autosport or a similar publication, @Enigma. And there was a bit of deductive reasonsing involved. One of the conditions of Hulkenberg re-signing was Williams was that he found sponsors, because the team knew they were losing some big ones; RBS and Philips had not renewed their contracts, AirAsia was going to Tony Fernandes, and there was a fourth one (I can’t remember which) that was leaving. When it was annouced that Hulkenberg was leaving the team, sponsorship was cited as one of the issues. Given that the team didn’t approach anyone else until Hulkenberg’s future was settled, and Hulkenberg’s rejection of contracts with Virgin (he didn’t want to race against Glock because losing to another German would harm his career) and Hispania (they were too slow for him), and certain comments that he made, it’s apparent that Hulkenberg seemed to think he should get a drive on the basis of his talent – when only a handful of drivers have no personal sponsors, and his performances in 2010 were not good enough to put him in that category of driver.

Not very.