Pastor Maldonado, Venezuelan racing driver: biography, sports career

Auto racing is one of the most popular sports in the world. Behind the stars of the car track millions of people around the world are closely watching, greedily absorbing those crumbs of interesting information coming from the media about their favorites. Each pilot of the race is a unique personality, whose life and sport career deserve the closest attention. In this article, we'll talk about a man named Pastor Maldonado. It is this athlete worthily representing Venezuela on the world stage in a racing environment.

Birth

The future star of the car track was born on March 9, 1985 in Maracay. At the age of four, Pastor Maldonado began to show interest in speed, which is not surprising, since he had relatives involved in motor racing - Uncle Manuel and Johnny's father. Thus, already at such an early age our hero continued his family tradition and became a worthy representative of his dynasty.

Childhood

Pastor Maldonado was trained in a school named after Juan XXIII. In it, he very diligently studied the Italian language, which in the future could greatly contribute to his racing career. Already in five years, the Venezuelan achieved fairly high results in mountain biking. It is this sporting direction that seriously helped his development as an athlete.

At the age of seven, Pastor first appeared in karting. In these races, he was also successful: between 1993 and 1999 he was able to win all national championships. Having managed to pass this way, the young man decided to try his luck already at the international level. His team consisted of himself, the manager Johnny Maldonado, the mechanic David Belandriya.

A new turn in life

Pastor Maldonado graduated from Maracay Military School. It was in him that he received many lessons that greatly contributed to his development as a person.

One of the most significant events in his life was the transition from karting to racing on single-seat cars.

In 2003, Pastor first appeared in the Italian Formula Renault Championship. His team was Cram Competition. As a result of the championship, he took a rather high place for the beginner - seventh. For the season he finished three times on the podium and even once won the semi-position. Also, while driving the Cram Competition, the pilot participated in the German stage of the Formula Renault, which was held at the Oshersleben circuit.

The first title

2004 was marked for the rider by double work: he performed simultaneously in the Italian and European versions of the Formula Renault. It was in Italy that he was able to become the champion for the first time. To do this, he needed eight wins in seventeen races. In addition, he participated in the Formula Renault Renault V6 on the track of Spa-Francorchamps, where he was able to take the fifth position.

In the autumn of the same year, Pastor Maldonado (number 13 is his permanent) visited as a test pilot of the Formula-1 Minardi team. The then owner of the team rather positively spoke about the skill of the rider.

Formula 3000

In this racing series, the pilot was in 2005. In it, he spent four races together with the team Sighinolfi Auto Racing, with which he reached the ninth place.

In addition, he rode in the World Series of Renault, where the best result was seventh place. It was in these arrivals that Pastor Maldonado, whose accident was in principle a rare event, received a ban on participation in four races. And all because in the race held in Monaco, he did not lose speed, as warning flags signaled. As a result, the racer got into an accident and quite seriously maimed the marshal.

Test of endurance

In 2006, the Venezuelan became a full-fledged participant in the race race race called the World Series of Renault. He played in it very unstable, all the same was honored to compete with the leaders of the championship and even win four runs. He was part of the Draco Racing team. At the end of the season, he was third in the overall standings, although he was to be in the first position. Such a downgrade in the rating was due to the fact that the Pastor received a disqualification on the Misano track due to a mismatch between the machine and the stated technical regulations. This decision was challenged in court in January 2007, but the final deprivation of the driver fifteen points led to the fact that as a result ahead of him were the pilots of the Italian Formula Renault Alex Danielsson and Borja Garcia.

Racing GP2

From 2007 to 2010 pilot Pastor performed in the racing series GP2. At the same time, he managed to drive simultaneously in the Euro Series 3000, as well as in the body championship International GT Open.

Already during the first test runs, Maldonado managed to demonstrate a very good driving speed and show brilliant driving skills. However, for a long time he could not achieve the desired result, and during the first season in GP2 he managed to get into a serious enough accident during training, because of what he left for some period of time because of a fracture of the collarbone.

Such instability in the performances and frequent changes of teams led to the fact that the Venezuelan could become a champion only four years of his active performances - in 2010, when he managed to win six consecutive races. At the same time, the pilot's manager was already looking for him a place in the elite races called Formula-1.

The Royal Race

In 2011, Pastor was found the place of a combat pilot in the "stables" Williams, which at that time was experiencing financial difficulties due to the fact that part of the sponsors refused to continue cooperation with it.

The team was experiencing serious problems and had one of the weakest and slowest cars in the entire championship. It goes without saying that during the crisis, no one particularly paid attention to the results of the pilot and did not make any significant claims. Maldonado was able to gain valuable experience during performances at such a high level. And after a while during the arrival of the Grand Prix of Belgium, the Venezuelan was able to score his first long-awaited test point, ahead of his much faster and more powerful cars Force India and Renault.

In 2012, the team from Britain replaced the supplier of engines, which greatly improved the rider's driving. Since that moment, the Pastor and his partner Bruno Senna started a regular fight for points, and on the track in Spain Maldonado and did manage to win for himself a half position and win as a result the race - the first for himself in all the races of the Formula-1 competition. However, the overall result of the season was not so positive - he took only the fifteenth line in the drivers' personal standings, which once again confirmed his absolute instability as an athlete.

Go to Lotus

In 2013, Maldonado once again experienced difficulties with the machine and struggled for places in the top twenty. For a year, he was able to earn just one point. In the off-season break the top management of the team made a rather ambiguous decision - to transfer the rider as the main pilot to the Lotus team. This idea completely did not justify itself, because the new stable for the Venezuelan had a great variety of technical problems. As a result, Pastor for eighteen races only once finished in the points zone (once he could not even start) and finished the season on the sixteenth line overall.

In February 2016, in various foreign media, news appeared that the Pastor would not take part in the new season of the Royal Race due to the fact that he would not be renewed with the contract, and the new pilot who took his place was Kevin Magnussen .