Team Williams deny rumours of selling F1 seat
Team Williams signed the young GP2 champion Pastor Maldonado in December 2010 as a replacement for the very talented Nico Hulkenberg.
Nico was able to score a pole position at a dry Brazilian Grand Prix even though his car was nowhere near the top running cars on the grid. On top of that, his pole position time was almost a second faster than the rest of the drivers and even his teammate
Rubens Barrichello was way behind him.
It was quite disappointing to see that Williams released such a talented driver as Nico Hulkenberg is. However, many people believed that Williams signed Pastor Maldonado mainly because he was bringing in a major sponsor from Venezuela with him.
These rumours were rejected by Williams chairman Adam Parr who recently stated that Pastor Maldonado was chosen by the team only because of his talent. He believes that these accusations are “repulsive and irrelevant.”
“The guy [Maldonado] has just won the GP2 championship with a rookie team, winning more races than anyone else. The mere fact that we have to talk about this is absurd,” Parr said.
He insisted that the young Venezuelan driver is extremely talented and the team is aware of it.
“We have never sat a driver in our car who we did not think was ready for Formula 1, deserved to be in Formula 1 and was capable of delivering. We work with an independent driver coach and he believes that, in terms of pure speed and talent, Pastor has as
much capacity as the two Nicos [Hulkenberg and Rosberg],” he added.
He believes that the team is going to stick with Pastor for a couple of years and that this deal was a long-term investment. The team’s chairman stated that money had nothing to do with this deal and gave the example of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso who also
had a big sponsor with him.
However, Parr hopes that Hulkenberg finds a team soon and said that the young German is very talented who takes Formula 1 very seriously.
“I would like to see him with Williams again. He has the dedication and the passion to be a great driver and I was so impressed with his maturity and professionalism. I hope he finds something somewhere else and on the other hand I would like to keep up
a relationship with him,” he said.
Tags: