F1 Fanatic

I’d like to ask this question to everyone in the F1fanatic community – Why is Pastor Maldonado a so called “Pay driver”? Pastor impressed me with his qualifying lap at Barcelona, and he’s now again in the top 10 at Monaco constantly outqualifying his experienced teammate Rubens Barrichello. I’m not a fan of Maldonado but I think “pay driver” is an unfair title towards him.

Looking at some of his past achievements:

2004 Italian Formula Renault Winner
2009 Euroseries 3000 Season Winner
2010 Season GP2 Series Winner – He beat Sergio Perez.

Not bad for a so called pay driver, is it?

We need to look at what a “pay driver” actually is. In itself, the term pay driver refers to a driver to pays for their F1 seat either by his own posessions or by bringing sponsors. That definition matches Maldonado very much. While he has shown talent, his Venezuelan money is a major part in him having that seat.

Now we must enter lexical semantics, because the bigger question is the inherent negative connection of the term “pay driver”, mainly caused by questionable F1 careers such as Deletraz or Lavaggi (although they have shown at least a basic level of talent after their F1 career) and the lack of insight into F1 business at said time, causing a disregarding attitude for and/or lack of knowledge of more successful drives who had money involved.

To put it short: describing Maldonado as a “pay driver” is, from the mere literal meaning of the term, not incorrect. The inherent negative connection with pay drivers, however, may make describing him as such a bit unjust. So, if one is using “pay driver” as an insult to him, it is unfair. If it is merely used to describe facts, it’s acceptable.

The meaning of “pay driver” has changed, least of all because there’s only about half a dozen drivers who don’t bring sponsorship to their respective team.

Because of the structure of feeder series and the demand for a superlicence in order to be able to compete in Formula 1, a driver cannot simply buy their way into the sport. They has to show some degree of talent before Formula 1 teams will even start considering them. Money certainly helps their cause, but if a sponsor wants to get into Formula 1, they tend to back the promising talent. For example, if you had tens of millions of dollars to invest in a GP2 driver with the aim of getting him into Formula 1 so that you could get increased brand exposure, would you back Romain Grosjean or Plamen Kralev?

And because people think Hulkenberg still deserved a seat with the team despite his “I won’t bring any sponsorship” attitude at a time when he knew the team needed money.

I think today he proved he isnt just there for the money. Shame a typically stupid Hamilton move ruined it for him.

He certainly performed favourably compared to Barry today, but we’ve always known that he is a specialist at Monaco. I’m still not convinced, hopefully some other GP2 driver will have a pot of gold to bring to Williams next year.

I’m with Ned. Whatever talent he has, it didn’t get him his seat. Money did, which is why people deride him as a pay driver rather than a driver with sponsorship money.

Too early to judge him yet though he’s going in the right direction.

Er no, Perez and Maldonado are labelled as pay drivers because they bring sponsorship deals, it’s as simple as that. Perez brings Telmex money, Maldonado brings PDVSA money. They could be from Venezuela, Germany, Jamaica or Djibouti, I don’t see why it should make a difference.

I can only speak for myself, but I certainly don’t use the term as a judgement of their abilities. I think some people still see it as it was meant back in the 90′s and early 00′s, a derogatory term for rubbish drivers who bought themselves into an F1 seat they did not deserve, like Yoong, Lavaggi, Deletraz etc. Nobody’s saying that Maldonado and Perez belong in this category