Just a few words on Pastor...

I started supporting Pastor Maldonado in 2007, when he first entered GP2. It was partly because he was great fun to watch on the track - flashes of pure brilliance mixed with moments of over-enthusiastic, haven't-got-the-hang-of-this-yet idiocy. You knew that he could do it, if only he could keep his head together.

...I must be perfectly honest with you though - my love for him was mostly created out of the fact that when James Allen (the UK's GP2 commentator that year) said his name, he said it like 'Pasta Maldonado' as if he was some sort of spaghetti dish. It made me and my dad giggle and gleefully shout 'PASTA MALDONADO!!' at the TV screen every time. (We're pretty simple.)

But during that 2007 season, it really was the joy (and pain) of watching him drive that made me a firm supporter. I get bored of silly names pretty quickly if there's no sparkle there to back it up. Pastor had sparkle - as I said, in between him mistiming overtaking manoeuvres because he was too excited to wait until the right opportunity, there were the times when his talent really truly shone through and you'd go 'Wow' out loud. And that was what made me take notice outside of the spaghetti jokes.

I kept an eye on him through 2008 and 09, too. To varying degrees depending on how much GP2 coverage I could get. (I remember one season I had to watch it on justin.tv, streaming from a Spanish (?) TV channel and I couldn't understand a word other than the driver names. Great fun.). And then 2010 hit, and Pastor had grown up. He won 6 feature races in a row, and I was there at 2 of them. (I wrote a blog about Spa. But Silverstone was my favourite one. That day at Silverstone was special. It was perfect. The sun was shining, Pastor dominated the race, and then we ran into him in the GP2 paddock afterwards and he was an absolute gentleman and giggled at me sweetly as my friends told him what a big geeky fan of his I was.) We had some tough times in 2010 too, it wasn't all plain-sailing, but he put in some sterling drives and deserved that championship.

And then, as GP2 Champion (of the world), he got the Williams drive for 2011. And suddenly everyone who hadn't given a damn about him beforehand suddenly couldn't wait to judge him and slag him off. With a mountain of bolivares (the Venezuelan currency!) behind him, he got the 'pay driver' tag. He also had an appalling car, and a lot of people couldn't/didn't see past that. I'm not saying he was perfect, but he didn't screw up very often (and I've already blogged about when he did) and he performed a lot better than his "worst record for a Williams driver ever" label made it seem. He matched or out-drove his team mate Rubens with great regularity. So I was happy.

When 2012 hit, it hit hard. He was stupendous at the first race in Australia... until the last lap where he ended up in the wall. I don't think he was driving stupidly, he was pushing but I don't think it was ridiculously hard. It just happened. And it broke my heart a little bit. And then in the second race, his car broke down - on the last lap!! He'd been in the points both times, so it was gutting to see those precious points slip away twice. China: he got some points (phew!). Bahrain: a puncture spun him round and ended his race. Ouch. So much promise so far, with very little show from it. But with a good little car under him, surely it was only a matter of time.

Roll on Spain 2012. I have no idea how it happened, to be honest. He was nowhere in FP1 and 2, but Saturday came and he lit up. Only Vettel scraped ahead of him in FP3. He smashed Q2 and, with admittedly a bit of (pointless?) tyre-saving going on in Q3, only Hamilton had an answer for him in qualifying. But the fuelling mishap meant that his answer didn't count, and so Pastor started on pole position. A few hours before quali I'd cheekily tweeted 'Pastor for pole!' - I didn't think he'd take me seriously!

His charmed weekend continued on Sunday. He didn't put a foot (or wheel) wrong. Those sparks of brilliance I've seen since back in 2007 came to the fore. I enjoyed his start - it was hugely aggressive, pushing Alonso right over, but he left exactly enough room for one car so it wasn't a dirty move. (Alonso mentioned this himself in a post-race interview, I like to think it was acknowledged with a little bit of respect). Still, Alonso got by, but that was OK. I could deal with that. Maldonado v Alonso, everyone knows who everyone expects to win that battle.

Of course, sometimes in life: everyone is wrong. When Williams' tactical genius combined with Pastor's not-even-I-expected-this blistering pace, and Pastor took the lead, I was as stunned as anyone. I watched the rest of the race in denial, convinced that Alonso or Kimi would win, because I couldn't let myself think that it could be Pastor. The gap went from 7 seconds to 0.6 seconds, but there was nothing Alonso could do. And with a few laps to go, Pastor started pulling the gap out again by 2 tenths per sector. It was incredible. He just soaked up all the pressure and drove his heart out.

My friends Chris and Kate plied me with tea to keep me alive while I watched the laps oh-so-slowly creep by. It was like the race went on for years. I spent the entire race hugging my Williams/Pastor cap for good luck. And then the last 5 laps hiding my face behind a cushion because I could hardly bear to watch anymore. 

But he did it. He crossed the line 3 whole seconds before anyone else. He shared the podium with two F1 World Champions who simply hadn't been able to take the win away from him today. Maybe things would have been a little different if Lewis had started from pole, but not by much. Pastor wasn't just gifted this win. He earned every inch of it. And he's made a lot of people start to see what I saw under the surface all those years ago. And I couldn't possibly be more proud.

Image from http://maxwellreyes.com

And let's not forget that Monaco's up next, and Monaco is his favourite circuit............!

OK, here goes...

So I haven't really said much about the Pastor/Lewis incident from yesterday yet. Because at first I just didn't know what to say. And then as I started to figure out my own thoughts, there was no way I could sum it up in 140 characters.

Let's just make sure you all know where I'm coming from to start off with. I love Pastor, and have supported him through thick and thin for years. So don't expect this to be an unbiased view-point.

But still, I felt massively disappointed yesterday. It was horrible. And I hope nothing ever happens in Pastor's career to make me feel quite like that again, because I couldn't take much more of that. But I didn't want to have a knee-jerk reaction to the whole thing, so I just tried to keep quiet and wait to see what the stewards made of it all. Not that the stewards are always right, but they have a lot more data at their disposal than the rest of us.

Interestingly, the more I watch the crash, the more I notice Hamilton twitching about at him. I'm not saying Pastor was an innocent bystander. But neither was Lewis. I think their penalties were fair. (Apparently 3 reprimands = a penalty, these days. Which is good because otherwise they're a bit pointless. Especially if someone keeps getting them..!)

I know Pastor's been a bit wild in the past and made some stupid, unthinking moves... but he's not been vindictive. The wildness that he was known for in the earlier days was mainly down to trying to overtake but getting it wrong or not having the space. I don't know what went on yesterday, but whatever it was I believe that it's not the sort of thing that he would normally do, so we'll put it behind us and move on. When everyone else is pissed off at him, I feel like that's when he needs me in his corner.

So, yeah, a little bit bruised, but still on his side.

And, on the other side of the coin, I was ever so proud of him in the race today. He did EXACTLY what he needed to do, which was to keep his head down, keep himself out of trouble, and drive as best as he could. And he ended up beating his team mate fair and square. And he made up 11 places. And he got himself one of those Championship point thingies that I've been so keen for him to get. Phew! It was unbearably tense for the last 12 laps or so - from about when all the pitstops had worked their way out and he was in 9th and I knew Massa would get him and di Resta was a proper threat. But he didn't put a wheel wrong all day long and his pace was good... a very good drive for him indeed.

So let's hope for lots more todays, and no more yesterdays, from now on. Please, Pastor.

(And if you have any massively anti-Pastor comments to make, can you please take them elsewhere. I'd rather you didn't direct them at me, because they won't serve any purpose other than to upset me. I just wanted to let you know where I stand so that I don't appear to have completely ignored the whole thing.)

While I'm here, I'll make a few other comments about Spa this weekend...

• I was absolutely thrilled for Jaime 'Bob' Algersuari in quali. To quote, um, Bruce Forsythe? - didn't he do well! Gutted for him in the race though. Poor little Bob.
• Another thrilled/gutted combination (this was basically the theme of the weekend for my boys!) - this time, Bruno Senna. Now, I love Bruno. Admittedly mostly because of that smile, but still, girliness aside, I think he's great. And he was very good in GP2 and so I think it's brilliant that he's had another chance in F1, and in a better car too. And I was so happy for him yesterday - him and Bob made yesterday worthwhile. And then today, bam, it all went wrong at the first corner. We'll have to see what he gets up to next race. (I do feel a bit sorry for Nick H though, I'm not sure he deserved to be thwown out of the car at this point in his caweer...)
• My other thrilled/gutted scenario was luckily the other way around - gutted first, then thrilled. Watching JB tumble down the times at the end of Q2 was awful. I was just shouting 'WHAT?!' repeatedly at my computer screen with every place that he lost in the dying seconds. 13th?! Rubbish. But whenever he starts somewhere in the teens, a little voice in the back of my head always thinks 'Oh, he's going to have fun tomorrow'. When the car's faster than the quali position alludes to, you just know there's a high chance that JB's going to have a blinder. And he did it yet again. And in normal, dry conditions, not the changeable weather that normally serves him so well. After what felt like forever (but was probably only about 10 laps) I remember thinking 'oh, he's not gone far yet...' and then suddenly BOOM. There he was. Another podium, thank you very much. Love it. Well done, Jens. I wonder what would be, if only he could sort out his Saturdays....
• In other news, apparently in my head I have started referring to Lewis as Crash Bandicoot. Just thought I'd let you know. My feeling on the Kobayashi incident is that Lewis should have looked in his mirrors. At least *tried* to look in his mirrors. I know the mirrors are teeny little things but you would have thought he'd be able to see Kamui in them, surely? They're there for a reason, Crash, why not try using them sometime...?
• Talking of mirrors, how bloody scary is the footage from when JB's mirror was knocked off at the start! Glad it was only his mirror that got hit, because otherwise that would have been nasty.
• And, my last point, neatly segued into with: talking of bloody scary - Mark Webber's pass on Alonso, going up Eau Rouge! Absolutely outstanding. I get goosebumps every time I see a replay, it's just terrifying. I can't help but feel that both of them were earning their $millions in that split second right there. Wow. Brilliant driving and bravery by both of them.

OK, I'm done. Apparently I had more to say than I thought I did...!

Spa - GP(naught-point-)2

So, as I mentioned - I went to the Grand Prix at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. It was utterly amazing. I genuinely gasped the first time I saw Eau Rouge looming up in the background, and we stayed to watch the start of the F1 FP1 from the F1 Village so that we could watch the cars go up Eau Rouge, and it was incredible. My friends and I just looked at each other with ridiculous grins on our faces every single time a car went up that amazing hill...

A photo will never do it justice. Especially not this photo.

Anyway, I'll talk more generally about the trip and about Spa later. But first things first - let's talk about GP2. The GP2 was ace.

Of course, it didn't start so well. The cars were only out for a few minutes of the practice session on rainy rainy Friday before someone crashed and the rain was so heavy that the red flag came out and stayed out. We watched the time just tick away until the session ended without the track being open again. Such a pity.

A little while later, it was time for qualifying. Race Control decided to go for the world record of number of red flags shown in one session. There were at least 4 red flags. It should have been a 30 min session, but there were so many breaks that it lasted at least twice that long. In fact, one break was so long we walked all the way from Pouhon back to Eau Rouge (via the F1 lorries and the blimp) before the green light came back on in the pitlane. It was tense but good, and Pastor ended up third which was acceptable.

Pastor on the big screen, Eau Rouge at our side.

Saturday dawned (with the occasional spot of sunshine), and poor Herck had his pole position taken away from him for yellow flag related naughtiness. This put Pastor onto the front row, which is where I like him to be. The race wasn't exactly straight forward for Pastor on Saturday, in fact it was his toughest race of the season. He put in a very solid performance from the start and JUST managed to leap ahead of Jermone d'Ambrosio at the pitstop. It was heart-stopping stuff, but he came out his box mere centimetres ahead of d'Ambrosio who'd pitted at the same time. (Alternative rubbish blog titles: "DAMN, Brosio!" or "Ooh ahh, it's d'Ambrosia")

Pastor wasn't quite in the lead though- Alvaro Parente was out front, but he still had to pit, after which Pastor would be P1. But before he could pull away from d'Ambrosio, something went a bit wrong with Pastor's car. We've not found out what went wrong, but his way of describing it in the press conference was that something in it was 'rubbing' and so he started to lose time and d'Ambrosio caught and passed him again.

Interestingly, Pastor says that he let Jerome through without fighting him so that he didn't lose time battling. It was a long-term strategy for the race - letting d'Ambrosio through, sacrificing 2 points and hoping that the trace of smoke spotted coming out of the rival car earlier in the race would turn into something bigger.  This was judged to be a the lesser of two evils when the other alternative was to fight the attacking moves from d'Ambrosio, stress the car out with the defensive driving, get caught up by the rest of the field, and probably get passed for the win (and more?) eventually anyway due to the lack of pace from the broken car.

I admit my initial reaction to this was - "WHAT?!". Pastor is a racer and a fighter and he does not give things up easily. This is what caused him to crash out of so many races in previous years - his inability to let go once he'd sniffed the chance of something. Admittedly he's tamed this wild streak immensely, but it still seems so un-natural to give away a win. (It sounds like the team told him he should, as Perez was out of the points at the time so it wasn't sacrificing too many championship points to his main rival).

But when I think about it, that one decision gave him the chance to win the race. If he'd lost any time fighting d'Ambrosio for that position, then they'd have lost time to Parente and Parente would have been able to simply leapfrog into the lead after his last-minute pitstop. And the smoke that Pastor had seen come from d'Ambrosio's car earlier in the race DID turn into something bigger - at one point, Jerome's car gave up the ghost and drifted to a halt. Pastor had his place back. And he was still a good 7 or 8 seconds ahead of Romain Grosjean, who was now third.

For a moment, everything was serene. Then with only 3 laps to go, Parente (who had started 19th and absolutely drove his socks off) came in to pit. Just as a few little spots of rain started to fall. He rejoined the track just in front of Grosjean - about 7 seconds down on Pastor. But Pastor's car was struggling round (the Eurosport commentators kindly referred to him as "a dead duck", but I don't think they realised his car was broken) and Parente was on the right tyres - tyres that are known to perform at their best for around about the first three laps. And he had three laps to go. He absolutely FLEW. He took three seconds out of Pastor's lead in the first lap. I swear my heart stopped beating.

When they started the last lap, Parente was a second or so behind Pastor, but he was driving like Billio. (I assume Billio drives quickly). When they came past us at Pouhon, Parente was only just a corner behind. I swear I stopped breathing. I peaked out at the track and the TV screens between my fingers for the rest of the lap - I couldn't bear to watch, but didn't want to miss it.

As they disappeared out of view, Parente was visibly catching Pastor - but Pastor was driving inch perfectly in the spitting rain, not over-driving, not panicking, just calmly putting his car in all the right places and getting it to the finish line as fast as he could. I resigned myself to the fact that Parente would overtake him, Pastor was powerless to it. Oh well. Second place wasn't bad, I guess. Let's try not to be too miserable when it happens. Don't let it ruin the weekend.

But Pastor kept going, kept holding on. He went deep into the Bus Stop and Parente got half a look, but Pastor still had it under control and managed to cross the line 0.2 seconds ahead of the other car. Wow. (Yeah, see, the blog title almost makes sense now..)

But it brings me back to a previous point - if Pastor had lost time by fighting with d'Ambrosio, then he would have been gobbled up by Parente with ease. So somehow, letting Jerome past ended up gaining him places. Funny how things work out in the end.

Pastor coming out of Pouhon

I must take a moment to say that both d'Ambrosio and Parente drove incredible races. Jerome was terribly unlucky that his car died on him, and Parente was immense to almost win after starting back in 19th. He played the game ever so well by waiting till the last minute to pit, and if he'd won then he'd have deserved it and even I would have (grudgingly!) admitted that. But Pastor drove incredibly well, and incredibly maturely, and if his car hadn't been slowed down a bit by the rubbing then he would have romped away into the distance.

Of course, whilst Pastor was racing for his life (well, for his title), all wasn't well with my other GP2 favourite, the unfortunate Sam Bird. Sam is an incredibly talented driver (I always tell people about how he was quicker than Jenson at a charity karting event a few years ago) but he's just having horrendous Johnny Herbert/Mark Webber luck this season. He can't catch a break. He's good at Spa and was looking forward to it - but he got taken out at the first corner of the feature race. I was a bit heartbroken for him. The sprint race wasn't much better. Roll on Monza... we've just got to keep the faith that one day he'll start getting the results that he deserves.

Also, we'd gone to all the effort of making him a sign and he only got to drive past it about three times...! Not that he'd have seen it at all, but it's the principle of the thing.

The world's most unimpressive sign - but I did draw it in the dark...

Incidentally, lots of people who left straight after the F1 quali and didn't stay for the GP2 walked past us to get out, and they would stop to read the sign. And they'd sort of smile, and then look confused, and then look blank and walk off. I felt like shouting after them all "Just you wait two years - then you'll know who the hell Sam Bird is!" But they were probably foreign so wouldn't have understood. ("Le oiseau? Je ne comprende pas!")

(And let's not talk of Sunday's sprint race. Pastor's car didn't last a whole lap, Sam had a miserable race and Johnny Cecotto (my second favourite Venezuelan) lasted five laps. And, to add insult to injury, Perez (second in the championship battle) won, so closed the gap up to Pastor again. I like to pretend Sunday's race didn't happen...! Thankfully, Saturday's race was awesome enough to make up for it.)

My pointless Pastor banner enjoys one of the best views on the circuit

Spa 2010

I'M GOING TO BELGIUM!

I'll tell you all about it when I get back I'm sure.

What a lovely way to celebrate the end of a very, very long F1 summer holiday.... by getting to see the cars in the metal.

Go go go Jenson, Mark, Timo, Bruno and Bob.  Not to mention the almighty Pastor Maldonado. And Sam Bird. And Jack Harvey. And Adrian Quaife-Hobbes (Quaifey). And James Jakes. And Oli Oakes. And everyone else I'm going to be cheering like a crazy person over the weekend.

Can't. Wait.

...Eau Rouge!

Apparently I can't type in sentences anymore. So I'll sign off.

I'll be back in a week or so.

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