The soon to be McLaren sporting director, Sam Michael, believes Pastor Maldonado has shown he deserves his place in Formula 1 after some impressive performances.
Michael previously held the position of technical director at Williams, but left the company last Sunday after a management reshuffle following a disappointing start to the year.
The pairing of Rubens Barrichello and Maldonado has achieved just five championship points. Barrichello has scored four of those five, but Michael says the Venezuelan has matched the Brazilian in terms of pace for much of the season.
“Although Pastor Maldonado is a rookie, he’s GP2 champion and he’s run pretty close to Rubens all year,” said Michael.
“If you take out the first four or five races, which is entirely normal for any rookie – I would normally say that a rookie needs a couple of years – but you can definitely start to see the signs as to whether the guy is capable or not by mid-season and I would definitely put Pastor Maldonado in that category.
“And if he wasn’t in that category, he wouldn’t have kept his drive going forward.
“So I can see the guy having an even stronger year next year when he knows all the circuits, because he’s still on a slope.”
The 40-year-old denied that Williams had chosen their line-up based on financial assets, despite Maldonado bringing upwards of £25 million through his PDVSA-backing.
“I would say that to say that Williams are taking their decisions on drivers from a financial point of view is not really correct at the moment, because otherwise they wouldn’t be choosing the drivers that they have.
“I think Williams will make the choices that are best for the company and the best results,” he concluded.
Discussion about this post