Williams’s executive director Toto Wolff is confident that Pastor Maldonado will learn from his mistakes this season and mature as a driver for the future.
The Venezuelan has underperformed since his Spanish victory earlier in the year and has failed to score a single point since. In part, his results have been hurt by various penalties for race incidents which Wolff says has taught Maldonado that he must change his approach.
“He’s got a huge raw talent – he is extremely fast,” Wolff said in an interview with the official F1 website. “He is a nice guy, which is important because you need to be socially competent to function in that environment.
“Yes, he seems to struggle in some situations in the race. From one stupid, heated incident in Monaco it has almost become an avalanche – and this is affecting his performance. But I think he has understood now that he has to take a different approach – this is not GP2.
“But he is an intelligent guy and he will learn from it. He understands that he is in a difficult situation, but he will rise above it. Of that I am 100 percent sure.”
Whilst speculation mounts that Valterri Bottas is set to replace either Maldonado or Bruno Senna for 2013, Wolff insists no decisions have been made.
“It’s too early to say,” he added. “Sure, we are taking different looks at the issue, but the minute we discuss it we are going to mess up Pastor and Bruno – and maybe others that we try talking to – so I would give it another month before we are going to have the first idea of what we want.
“Announcing a driver line-up is always an interesting topic so I think we take the approach of making an announcement when it will excite people.”
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