Sam Michael: Pastor Maldonado is naturally talented indeed – Formula 1 news
Team Williams’ technical director Sam Michael recently stated that the team’s rookie driver Pastor Maldonado who has replaced Nico Hulkenberg as a full season driver is definitely talented “naturally.”
However, he stated that Rubens Barrichello is clearly the team’s number 1 driver.
“One of the things I liked, and I called Frank, Patrick and Adam straight away after the first test to say, was that he's definitely naturally talented. On his first day in Valencia we looked a lot at his data compared to Rubens and we could see that he
has natural talent,” Michael said at the launch of the FW33’s livery.
This would be a bit discouraging for Pastor Maldonado though as quite naturally, each driver on the grid believes that his team will maintain equilibrium and not favour one of its driver over the other.
Pastor Maldonado drove for the team at all of the pre-season test sessions up until now and drove his new Williams car for almost six days during this time. Sam Michael claims that he called the team’s bosses Frank Williams, Patrick Head and Adam Parr to
find out how the young Venezuelan did during the pre-season test sessions.
“Pastor's a rookie, he'll make a few mistakes and have a few crashes - every rookie does. The one thing I am quite impressed by already is - primarily because he is 25-years-old and five years older than a normal rookie - his level of maturity, that's higher,”
said Michael.
He also stated that the new car has been developed to suit Rubens Barrichello’s driving style and in 2011, the Brazilian is expected to be on top of his game.
Rubens Barrichello holds the record of most race starts in the sport that is 303 race starts. He has been a part of the sport since 1993 and he has driven for teams like Ferrari and BrawnGP during their respected title reigns. He is definitely going to be
a source of inspiration for Pastor Maldonado and the young Venezuelan is lucky that he will get to drive alongside a driver like Rubens.
Sam claims that Pastor is aware of this development and one has to agree, Maldonado will have to wait for at least a couple of years in order to get used to Formula 1 and since he is not driving for one of the top running teams, settling in the sport for
him is not going to be as easy as it seems. It is quite clear that Williams is not going to rise anytime soon but the team is optimistic that they would improve and give a much better performance in the upcoming Formula 1 season.
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