Williams’ Pastor Maldonado secures maiden Formula 1 victory

Pastor Maldonado stunned with his first ever Formula 1 victory at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

Williams get their first win after eight years as they last won in 2004. Maldonado has looked good with the new Williams car in the season but no one including himself expected the result he has achieved.

Maldonado’s win has now made the 2012 season to be in a situation it has only seen once before. In 1983, Formula 1 saw five different drivers from five different teams win the first five Grands Prix and so far, 2012 has matched that stat.

Ferrari will also be very pleased with the results of the Spanish Grand Prix as Alonso managed to finish the race behind Maldonado and fancying chances of winning it. The team has come a long way from being competitive enough to stay in points to being in serious contention for the world titles for the season.

Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa has found it equally hard to find form and has not been able to live to his expectations. Massa finished the race placed 15th a performance he will not be happy with and his place in the team is looking weaker and weaker with each passing race.

Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean in the Lotus have shown a lot of maturity and the same pace they showed in Bahrain and finished the race at a respectable third and fourth place respectively. Raikkonen though felt he could have won the race and will be disappointed not to have done so but Lotus overall is looking very strong for the future races and are in serious contention for the world titles.

Sauber’s star driver of the season Sergio Perez was not able to finish the race as technical fault caused his race to end prematurely but his teammate Kamui Kobayashi showed that the team has the car to perform consistently by finishing the race at 5th.

Red Bull had a horrid race weekend as the team first made a mistake with Mark Webber’s Qualifying which caused him to be out of Q3. Sebastian Vettel managed to finish 6th in the qualifying and stayed at 6th at the end of the race as well while Webber finished 11th.

Mercedes also had a forgetful race as Michael Schumacher suffered a collision with Williams driver Bruno Senna taking out both the drivers out of the race this was Schumacher’s third retirement out of the five races of the season so far. Nico Rosberg managed to finish the race placed at 7th.

Hamilton suffered the big blow in qualifying as he finished with pole position but was penalised for having stopped the car at the circuit and not the pit lane. The penalty caused Hamilton to be disqualified from the qualifiers and had to start the race at the back of the grid. He managed to finish the race place at 8th a very good result considering what he had to go through.

Followed by Hamilton was his team mate Jenson Button at 9th. Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg took the final spot of the top ten.

It was another exciting and unpredictable race of the season that is turning out to be more exciting with each passing race. It will be very interesting to see how the season pans out as it progresses forward.

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Posted by Kashif Khan on May 14 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.