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....

Six Racers held in widening Venezuelan Scandal

No names have been released but news is that six prominent Venezuelan auto and motorcycle racers are being held or sought as a "precautionary measure"on suspicion of defrauding the state.

EJ Viso in the hospital

The scandal came to light when the minister for sport, Alejandra Benitez discovered forged signatures on funding requests and went public.     Today Interior and Justice minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres said the racers falsified requests and inflated costs for at least US $60 Million.

One of the persons of interest is, according to Rodriguez Torres, missing in the United States.    Andretti Autosport driver E.J. Viso was missing from the Indycar season finale because of a sudden attack of the "stomach flu" and even tweeted a picture of himself looking, one must say, not too ill on a hospital bed... but that may be just a coincidence.

The Venezuelan Minister goes on to put some of the blame on the country's "gigantic" enemy, the United States,  hellbent on bringing government down.

Whether you buy that conspiracy or not, US based teams did seem to have a special price menu for Venezuelan drivers, at least as suggested by requests approved by the former minister of sport, Hector Rodriguez and documented on his twitter account:
$ 936,277.76 for GrandAm practice for Gaetano Ardegna Perez?  $678,000.00 for Alex Popow for NASCAR Nationwide practice?

I'm guessing it did not all go to tires and crew sandwiches.


UPDATE: one driver was named among those held or sought in this investigation, Paolo Andreasi who has raced in Europe in the Blancpain Endurance series with Kessel Racing (top photo: Kessel Racing.com)