Pastor Maldonado: Williams are close to the top teams – Formula 1 news
Williams driver Pastor Maldonado says that his team is not that far away from the pace of the top teams including McLaren and Red Bull Racing.
Williams had quite a discouraging season during the last year, however, they had shown some remarkable performance at the 2012 Australian Grand Prix held at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia, last week.
Maldonado crashed his car during the final lap of the first race when he was forcing Fernando Alonso of Ferrari for the fifth place. Moreover, after showing the pace to run close to the front, he said that he believed they were ahead of the midfield contenders.
“McLaren and Red Bull look strong, but we are not far away,” Maldonado is quoted by Turun Sanomat. “We were very close to (Red Bull's) Mark Webber in the first and second stints. I think we are faster than Ferrari, Sauber and Force India.”
Furthermore, after the crash at the first GP, Maldonado expressed that the performance of the car on track had encouraged him that they could manage to score points in the upcoming races of the season ahead.
“We need points in the future ... but we are also now more relaxed now,” he added.
Besides, Maldonado revealed that the next race would be a quite challenging one for all the rivals because the conditions at Sepang Circuit were expected to be hot and humid. Nonetheless, he said that they were confident and would hopefully do well in the
second race as their car had a lot of potential.
He also hoped to finish amongst the top ten positions in the second GP. In addition, he said that he felt confident in his team after all the hard work they had done over this year’s pre-season.
Furthermore, he said that he was looking forward to get some good result in the next race this weekend after his performance at the season opener.
Maldonado’s teammate Bruno Senna said that he had been at Sepang circuit before while he said that he was aiming to perform well in the second race this weekend. He also said that he would keep in mind what he had learnt in the first GP.
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