Maldonado in numbers
76 official points · best championship finish: 14th in 2015
0Drivers’ titles
none
0Constructors’ titles
none
1.1% of races
1.1% of races
1.1% of races
0Drivers’ titles
none
0Constructors’ titles
none
1.7% of races with Williams
1.7% of races with Williams
1.7% of races with Williams
0Drivers’ titles
none
0Constructors’ titles
none
Pastor Maldonado won one Grand Prix, and that win is still Williams' most recent. A Venezuelan born in 1985, he arrived in Formula 1 in 2011 with Williams, in a hard year for the team in which he scored a single point.
In 2012, in Barcelona, he started from pole. Lewis Hamilton had set the fastest time, but his McLaren did not have enough fuel left for the sample after qualifying and he was sent to the back of the grid. Maldonado held off Fernando Alonso, racing at home, and won. It was his only Formula 1 podium and Williams' 114th win. The team has not won since.
The rest of his career was more uneven. He stayed at Williams in 2013 with a single point, and in 2014 he moved to Lotus, where he raced two seasons. In 2015 he scored 27 points, his best tally after 2012. He was left without a seat for 2016.
One win, one pole and a single podium, all on the same Sunday. Few drivers in history have a record like that.
What if Maldonado had another car?
We took his real attributes and put him in the best car of each era: in a real driver's seat, against the team-mate that car actually had. 30 full seasons in each.
| Car | Team-mate | Finish | Wins | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| McLaren1988 | Alain Prost-135 pts | P2 | 0.7 | 0% |
| Williams1992 | Riccardo Patrese-83 pts | P3.6 | 0.8 | 0% |
| Ferrari2002 | Rubens Barrichello-108 pts | P2.4 | 2.8 | 0% |
| Red Bull2013 | Mark Webber-118 pts | P2.6 | 3.2 | 0% |
| Mercedes2016 | Lewis Hamilton-176 pts | P2.1 | 1.2 | 0% |
| Red Bull2023 | Sergio Perez-94 pts | P2 | 5 | 0% |
| Cadillac2026 · 11th on the grid | Valtteri Bottas-2 pts | P13.7 | 0 | 0% |
The only one who beats him is Lewis Hamilton in the 2016 Mercedes: 176 points clear over a full season.
Ver en españolRating by season
- First season
- 66 2011
- Peak
- 71 2012
- 2015
- 68 Lotus
5 seasons in the database, from 2011 to 2015. Our own rating, from 50 to 99.
Teams
Tags
Best year
2012
What would Pastor Maldonado have achieved with a different car or in a different era?
Related drivers
His team-mates
4 team-mates across 5 seasons. When both finished the race, Maldonado was ahead in 26 of 53; on the grid he started ahead in 39 of 96.
| Year | Team-mate | In the race | On the grid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Rubens BarrichelloWilliams · 19 races | 5-6 | 9-10 |
| 2012 | Bruno SennaWilliams · 20 races | 6-6 | 15-5 |
| 2013 | Valtteri BottasWilliams · 19 races | 9-5 | 7-12 |
| 2014 | Romain GrosjeanLotus F1 · 19 races | 5-5 | 5-14 |
| 2015 | Romain GrosjeanLotus F1 · 19 races | 1-5 | 3-16 |
The first number is always Maldonado's. A team-mate is whoever started the same race for the same team. "In the race" only counts races both finished, because a retirement says nothing about who was quicker. "On the grid" is the starting position, with penalties already applied.
Compare Maldonado with another driver
Titles, wins, poles and podiums side by side, against any of the 789 drivers in history.
Keep reading
Where Pastor Maldonado comes up in what we have measured, with our own numbers.
- 8 min readHow much is pole worth? 709 races say half, and that the circuit hardly mattersPole converts into a win 50% of the time since 1988. The surprise is the other half: a track’s reputation predicts nothing. Monza converts more pol…
- 6 min readIn 1982, eleven different drivers won. In 2023, threeWe counted the winners of every season since 1950. Variety has fallen decade after decade, and the years with fewest different winners are exactly…
- 6 min readWhere Grand Prix wins come from: 1,164 races since 1950Four in five races are won by someone starting in the top three, and only 28 times in history has anyone won from outside the top ten. But the tren…