OBSCURE F1 A-Z: PASTOR MALDONADO

In this 26 part series of posts I will be going through the alphabet and for each letter, a profile piece on an obscure driver - some you may have heard of before some you may never knew even sat in an F1 car let alone raced one. I have chosen a driver for each letter choosing them based on their surnames.

Pastor Maldonado with his moment of fame in 2012 and his reputation of crashing his car more often than not made the Venezuelan driver somewhat of a cult hero within the F1 community. He raced in F1 for five years (2011 - 2015) racing for Williams and Lotus. In the five years he raced he entered 96 races and started 95.

He made his debut at the 2011 Australian Grand Prix a race in which he failed to finish due to a transmission failure on his Williams Cosworth.

13th May 2012 a day no Formula One fan can ever forget - the day Pastor Maldonado made racing history by becoming the first ever Venezuelan to win a Formula One race - after securing pole on the Saturday ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.

No one was going into this race thinking the Williams would finish on the top spot, but after a deserving drive and lapping up to tenth place and taking out a three second lead over second placed man Alonso - Pastor crossed the line to give Williams their first win since the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix. The victory in Spain is Williams' last win in F1 to date.

Maldonado's final race was the 2015 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix a race where Pastor didn't even make the first lap after colliding with another driver in his Lotus Mercedes.

In his five years of racing at the top level Maldonado achieved the following accolades;

0 Fastest Laps

1 Pole Positions

76 Career Points

1 Podium

1 Win

Maldonado also became the first ever F1 driver to race with the number 13.