Don't cry for me...Venezuela.

Face it, F1 will be a less exciting place without Pastor Maldonado.

How many times have we listened to Bernie Ecclestone propose some bizarre scheme to inject uncertainty into races?  He may have never gotten the sprinklers he wanted but he did have Pastor Rafael Maldonado Motta, the embodiment of the uncertainty principle in racing.

Pastor became Crashtor, a living meme.

It's easy to dump on Maldonado, his driving, his story, even his looks, he was made to be turned into a villain.  
The man did not help himself when he started muttering about being sabotaged by his Williams mechanics,  echoing excuses given by the incompetent rulers of his country of Venezuela, who blamed their economic disasters on sabotage by the United States.

You will not have Maldonado to kick around anymore.

But in the end, Pastor will have the last laugh:  for all the scorn and ridicule, the man is part of a select club of Grand Prix winners and nobody will ever take that away from him.  
His one win puts him above the vast majority of drivers and on par with the likes of Alesi, Kubica, Trulli Panis, Cevert, Mass, just to name a few.

That Maldonado had speed at one point in his career is without question: in 2010 he won the GP2 championship against an extremely competitive field.  He won 6 races beating future F1 drivers like Sergio Perez, Jules Bianchi , Romain Grojean,  Marcus Ericsson .    I remember watching him around Monaco and it was obvious he had both speed and consistency.

What happened?   I imagine he never had the right people around him to temper the craziness that must come with the president of your country handing you a trailer full of money and selling you as the sporting savior of his crumbling country.

Sad, on many levels.

For sure, F1 will be a bit less ...uncertain.

Adios Crashtor!

Oil bust: Pastor Maldonado's contract is only the beginning.

My friend Andres sent me a text today:  "Venezuela is basically broke".

Hours earlier I was listening to a radio report about six hour lines in Caracas to get rice, flour and sugar.  

Hugo Chavez' handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro has failed to move the country away from it's $110 barrel oil "economy" and lost elections this past December by a landslide.    The Chavista Supreme Court is declaring the now opposition led National Assembly invalid and the National Assembly is trying to get the Supreme Court fired.

Meanwhile, the government forces citizens to use a biometric scanner to buy a quart of milk...

As you may imagine  interest Maldonado's gold plated (or was it oil stained?) driving sponsorship has fallen by the wayside in his native country.

There are news reports PDVSA has yet to pay the $50M it takes for anyone to give Pastor the keys to an F1car.  

Not a shocker.

But surely if it starts in Venezuela, already a basket case for many reasons,  low oil prices have the  potential to threaten motorsport broadly.  

Think  Shell,  Total,  Petronas.

Think of the Gulf States: Bahrain, Abu Dhabi,  you don't think they feel it?   Qatar just killed off al Jazeera America because of low oil prices.

What about Azerbaijan,  how long will that last?  

And that's just F1....

Pastor sauce

Major face palm moment courtesy of Lotus's Pastor Maldonado who thought it  would be a great idea to dive-bomb Gutierrez as he was exiting the pits.

Someone please ban this tool.  

Maldonado has accused Williams of sabotage.

Unhappy with the team and out the door next season with at least part of his Venezuelan government oil company sponsorship, Pastor Maldonado today got his ass handed to him by young teammate Valteri Bottas in qualifying

Asked about his poor performance, the Venezuelan has accused  Williams  of sabotaging his car.

"There is someone who's had fun playing with my tire pressures" Maldonado told Italy's RAI TV.

Now, it's a well known practice for every race driver to first blame the car for his or her's own failings but, as my good friend Andres said: Williams is hovering in 9th spot in the championship with just a single point scored this season, why would they bother to sabotage anything and jeopardize any chance of scoring?

What next, Maldonado blame a US government conspiracy agains Venezuela?

Green, Green Green: Venezuela stops the money flow

What makes a race car go fast?     That's right, money.

E J Viso in Houston with Andretti Autosport

You could have the best talent, the best ideas, run your team with the efficiency and precision of a Swiss watch but, if you don't pay the bills, you're not racing.  

Motor racing and nebulous financing are no strangers, from the very pinnacle of Formula One  to regional racing like Grand Am, ALMS  or Indycar in North America.  Cases and allegations of scams run the gamut from outright fraud like Greg Loles's   to allegations of bribes paid for financial considerations as in the German case against Bernie Ecclestone.    Truth of the matter is most teams  in racing are constantly on the edge financially and very few will ever be in a position to be choosy about where funds come from.

This brings us to the seemingly miraculous explosion in Venezuelan driving talent over the past several years.  a country of 30 million, with few race tracks has spawned a seemingly inexhaustible supply of racers and gentlemen drivers buying rides.  PDVSA, the state owned Venezuelan oil company and Citgo, its US subsidiary  are major team sponsors in F1 and Indycar. The "Venezuela, conocerla es tu destino" stickers promoting tourism became ubiquitous on GrandAm tracks.

Apparently it's everyone's destiny now to get to know a bit more about Venezuelan sponsorship.  

We first heard whispers about how the program worked when we were at the 2012 Rolex 24.  Simply put, the talk was those stickers came with a very sizable kickback percentage requirement.   Classic laundering, classic cleptocracy.  

Now many teams will be left scrambling in light of Venezuela freezing of motorsport sponsorship funds,   the allegations not of direct kickbacks from drivers and/or teams but of currency fraud.  
Perhaps people did not not expect the Venezuelan Minister for Sport, former olympic fencer Alejandra Benitez to, you know, do he job just because she's a hot babe who was photographed in the buff.  As it turns out, Ms Benitez did not take kindly to her signature being forged and discovering among other things, 66 million of government dollars going to sponsor one driver alone, at a time when ordinary Venezuelans are limited to exchanging a mere US$3000 per year for foreign travel and when dollars are sold on the black market for 7 times the value.

Who got $66 million in 2013?   Pastor Maldonado paid $46 million to Williams in 2012 for his seat and that's for what is by far the most expensive series on the planet.  You do the math.  How much did Venezuela give out to drivers and teams? How much complicity was there from teams?  I doubt we are destined to learn that.

All this of course while PDVSA, manager of the country's main asset is in shambles thanks to "marxist management" and Venezuela has  an almost 50% inflation rate.  

Green, green, green!

Pastor Maldonado FAIL

Pastor Maldonado took to the street of Caracas with his state sponsored Williams to the bombastic announcements of Venezuelan TV proclaiming the revolutionary glory of La República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

People on the street had a good laugh when he bent it after two laps. "Hahaha, He even crashes here!" Pastor probably thought he saw Hamilton and Checo Perez in the crowd and will blame them.

Maldonado said "I had the line but the kerb cut me off and crashed into me"



(Thanks, Andres and @soimightbewrong and Kat Kim)



Where is Andres Cantor when you need him? "Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash!"

2012 Spanish GP: Happy Birthday Edition

Pastor Maldonado giving his detractors the finger.

Happy Birthday Frank! What a way for Frank Williams to celebrate his 70th, an unexpected win and a disastrous fire in the garages just as celebratory pictures were being taken. Fantastic seeing a Williams Renault win again though.

In the end this proved another somewhat dull Spanish GP, the only pass for the lead on track was in short stretch between the start and turn one when Fernando Alonso held a master class in how to do a start properly. From then on it was a race dictated by tires. You get the feeling Ferrari played it too safe and settled for second rather than go for the win and risk ending in third place.

One can argue that the 2012 Pirellis have given more of a show by being so unpredictable but the counterpoint is that they completely deprived us of a potentially fantastic three way fight between Maldonado, Alonso and Raikkonen.
I don't know how a company can agree to make deliberately inferior tires, these Pirellis are just flaky and not just because they turn tracks into single lane toboggan runs more even than the Bridgestone before them. Can we please have a linear tire that does not throw crap all over the track?

What of Pastor Maldonado? Does he prove every dog has his day or did he get a bad rap along with his giant suitcase full of money courtesy of Hugo Chavez? Well, despite how Autoblog described him, he's no rookie, he beat Perez and the much touted Jules Bianchi in GP2. An nobody can take away a win that was not in any way "gifted" or lucky, It took Rosberg a hell of a lot longer to get in that club and while some will argue Barrichello was the faster driver (yes, some will other than Rubens himself), money talks and after today the Venezuelan shepard has made bullshit walk, at least a little further down the road.

As far as the bigger picture of the championship you might have seen the statistics from 1983 when the first five races were won by Piquet, Watson, Prost, Tambay and Rosberg. Piquet won the championship that year with only three wins and in the final few races. A similar outcome could mean the championship would be decided by consistency. Who have been the consistent podium finishers in 2012? It's the usual crowd, Hamilton, Alonso, Button, Vettel and Raikkonen. Of those only two have scored in every race, Hamilton and Alonso. I have no doubt Raikkonen will be in the mix as longas the Lotus pit wall stops smoking that funny stuff and gives him a sane strategy. Bring it but please Pirelli, let them drive!

As usual I look forward to your comments, but first, enjoy the Executive Summary!