Maldonado Pay Driver?
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How does that even make sense? F1 is primarily a business nowadays, and they WANT people from unusual countries because it brings new fans and new markets to sell products!
As has been stated above, the reason Maldonado is portrayed as a pay-driver is because the only reason williams replaced Hulkenburg was because he brought money. Perez is thought of less in this manner because that space would have been open either way, so theres no saying if he would have the seat either way
Exactly what Icthyes said. I don’t have any more to add on the pay driver front really as he’s said it all.
When it comes to Hulk vs Pastor for performance/image I’ll admit I’ve never liked Pastor much; I thought it took him too long to do anything significant in GP2 and when he did the field wasn’t as competitive as it had been in previous years. However, I like to give all rookies a chance with the testing ban and I think that his good showings over the past two races then have been pretty good for a new guy especially when his team mate is Rubens. It’s nothing stellar yet but it’s a step in the right direction and Hulkenberg didn’t do much at the beginning either.
I think it is a shame really that he gets lumped into that category, he is the current GP2 champion after all and he isn’t exactly being ‘shown the door’ by Barrichello.
I think it mostly comes down to the fact that he replaced a reputable driver in Hulkenberg (although he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory last year Pole aside) because Willy obviously needed the cash AND the GP2 field last year was perhaps not regarded as one of the strongest.
Pedro Diniz – come on, surely one of the longest serving ‘pay’ drivers!
Was he brought into Williams as a pay driver? Yes.
After the last couple of performance, is he still a pay driver? It’s debatable, as he’s shown some talent just lately.
Where not talking about business.
Where talking about why he is considered a pay driver, and others in the same situation are not.
For me that’s the main reason. According to the press Germans and British are never pay drivers, they always got into F1 just by talent.
Perhaps you have a point- Adrian Sutil, for example, is a pay driver in that he’s tied to money from Medion, but he doesn’t often get called one. Maybe because he’s proved himself to be a competent race driver over the past four and a half years. Maldonado, on the other hand, has only just started out. But then again, presumably because there are far more of them, European racing drivers are much less likely to bring money
Well, there is at least one British driver who was paid to be in F1 rather than the other way around: Hamilton. Button I think won his seat in a testing shoot-out and was very hyped.
I also vaguely recall Justin Wilson admitting he was a pay driver at one point, having some public sponsorship scheme where you could by shares in him or something of the sort. Ironically he was turfed out of Jaguar because they needed Klien’s money.
Yes, most drivers do need some money to get their seats but like Ned says, a lot are proven. It’s not that there are pay-drivers and non-pay-drivers, it’s that some drivers are just pay-drivers.
Ah yes, Christian Klien, now there’s a European pay driver!
I was about to reply that Wilson was turfed out because he was rubbish!… but, thinking about it, is that true? He certainly had a lot of potential. IIRC he beat Mark Webber to the F3000 championship, and he had the better of Jos Verstappen at Minardi. It was only when he had those 5 races at Jaguar that he seemed a bit out of place, but at least he scored a point, more than Pizzonia had managed.
At the risk of taking this thread even further off topic, does anybody know what Wilson is doing these days? Presumably he’s still racing?
Oh, I completely forgot about that! I don’t think he moved to IndyCar’s when the two series’ merged though
Maldonado and Perez where first and second at the GP2, isn’t this prove enough?
Justin Wilson is at the IRL, I think is problem was being to tall. At smaller series this is not so important. But in F1, where everything is milimetricaly calculated, the necessity of a bigger cockpit was a big issue for him.
Maldonado and Perez where first and second at the GP2, isn’t this prove enough?
Even Lucas di Grassi beat Maldonado in 2009. So did Romain Grosjean, even though he missed a third of the season! This despite driving in the same car as champion Nico Hulkenburg.
I’m glad you touched on Perez, because he is rated higher than Maldonado despite finishing second to him. Partly because it was in only his second year, whereas Maldonado had four years to win GP2. The simple statistic of being GP2 champion is meaningless, especially when the three of the five drivers who beat him in 2009 (the top 3 drivers from that year, in fact) all graduated and a fourth (Grosjean) didn’t enter the next year.
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