![]() “ ‘OK, this is our chance’,” he makes clear, with a grin on his face. It was a good one for the team, because they didn’t expect to be on pole – honestly, nobody did!” Maldonado wants more as race day loomsĪnd what was Maldonado’s mindset ahead of this unexpected chance to start from the front of the grid? Did he feel a shock pole could be turned into a shock win? Or would he be happy to let the established runners slot ahead and bag a solid haul of points? He was lighter than us, so the difference should be down to the lightness of the car, and I got the pole position. “Hamilton was a little bit quicker but he got penalised because he was running out of fuel in the lap, and these are the rules. “The strategy was to use all the soft tyres for qualifying it’s a little bit different now with the number of tyres, and it was working perfectly. “We were performing from Q1 to Q3 very good, driving very safely, very clean and safe – all the laps were coming easily, one by one,” says Maldonado. READ MORE: Formula 1 and DHL introduce biofueled trucks for European races in 2023 to reduce carbon emissions It was a stark contrast to the previous round in Bahrain, where Maldonado had qualified 17th and then dropped to the penultimate row of the grid due to a gearbox change. Huge celebrations erupted in the Williams camp and they reached a new level when the stewards excluded Hamilton from qualifying for failing to return to the pits under his own power and supply a fuel sample, meaning Maldonado assumed an unlikely but very welcome pole. ![]() In qualifying, the flash of FP3 pace proved to be genuine as Maldonado easily made it out of Q1, stormed to the top of the timesheets in Q2 and then pushed for pole position in Q3 until McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton pulled out a particularly rapid lap. In the end, we decided to go for quali with the new package.” Maldonado proves Williams’ speed is genuine “Of course, some parts of the team, we were pushing to have it, because it was quite impressive, but other parts were very conservative and said, ‘OK, we have more races to come, we can use it from the next race onwards’. Normally, the team has the policy to use it and come back to the factory to check everything is all in place, then put it back on the car. “The engineers were a little bit scared, because the package was not running with a minimum time limit, just to see the reliability of the parts. “After practice, we sat down and I said, ‘OK, we should use the package’,” Maldonado explains. READ MORE: From Hamilton’s crystal ball to Mansell’s McLaren nightmare… 5 bold driver moves that paid off – and 5 that didn’t Then came a dilemma for Maldonado and Williams, for while the various updates were working well according to the lap times and data collected, they had only been run across a one-hour session, meaning plenty of question marks remained as to their performance and reliability over a race distance. I really like the car when it’s precise in the front, just to attack the corner.” The feedback was very good there were good improvements in terms of feeling and I had the car to my driving style with a good front-end. “On Friday I was P13, and on Saturday morning with this package we were P2, so we improved by 11 positions. In the meeting before FP3, we decided to use the package anyway, just to see… It was very important for the factory just to get the feedback and how it behaved on the car. “The package was late for many reasons and only arrived on Saturday morning. It was quite big in terms of an aerodynamic change. “Really, everything was new… A new floor, new front wing, new rear wing, new sidepods. “When we arrived in Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix, we expected to have a new aero package,” says Maldonado. READ MORE: Pastor Maldonado and F1’s other ‘one-win wonders’ over the years Upgrades launch Williams into contentionĪfter that missed opportunity, Maldonado scored his first points of the season in China, sitting alongside a pair of solid top 10 finishes from new team mate Bruno Senna, but Williams were chasing more and, as the European season approached, excitement built at Grove over a raft of aerodynamic upgrades. That promise carried over to the Australia season opener, where Maldonado made it into Q3 and ran inside the top six positions until late in the race, crashing out during the final lap as he attempted to put pressure on Ferrari rival Fernando Alonso – a driver he would soon meet again. It was very encouraging from a driving point of view, much more balance, and the reliability of the engine.” “We were trying to put it all together for the first test and I immediately felt that the car was much better than previously – much better. “Starting the year, the car was a little bit late, because of all the changes in very little time,” recalls Maldonado, speaking from his Monaco home.
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