The men behind Maldonado

Pastor Maldonado hasn't made an impact on the scoreboard during his nine-race Formula 1 career. But that's not to say that the Venezuelan rookie has been a failure, despite the baggage that bringing money to the Williams team lumbered the GP2 champion with. He has looked far from out of place in F1 and although his remarkable drive at Monaco - where he was bundled out of sixth place by Lewis Hamilton late in the race - is the highlight, there have been other very promising signs.

Take his qualifying performances compared to his veteran team-mate Rubens Barrichello. Five times he has outqualified the Brazilian and since the Spanish Grand Prix, where Maldonado first made the top 10 shoot-out that is Q3, it has been the younger Williams driver who has usually shown the better single-lap speed. In a season during which Williams has scored a scant four points, the promise shown by Maldonado has been one of the positives.

He first drove an F1 car at Misano in 2004, completing 22 laps in a Minardi, but it wasn't until last November's rookie test that his real career in the big league started. His journey from F1 novice to proven grand prix driver - for he has shown beyond question that he merits a shot at this level - has been the steepest learning curve of his life. Sharing it every step of the way have been his race engineer Xevi Pujolar and data engineer Andrew Murdoch.

Spaniard Pujolar was at Hispania in 2010 prior to returning to his old team Williams this year. This means that he engineered Maldonado for the three days of running that he completed for Hispania at Yas Marina last November; first during the rookie test and then the inaugural Pirelli tyre try-out. Murdoch engineered Maldonado when he drove for Williams for a day during the Yas Marina young driver test, and so both have been involved with their relatively young charger pretty much from his beginnings in F1.

Maldonado drove for Williams at the Yas Marina tests last year © LAT

The first test

Preparations for his Williams debut at Yas Marina started long before Maldonado headed out to the Middle East for the final round of his GP2 title campaign. While having one day with Hispania under his belt before jumping into the Williams FW32 gave him a rolling start in terms of track experience, work needed to be done at the team's Grove factory to ensure that Maldonado was ready.

"When Pastor came to do his seat fitting, he spent some time in the simulator and being evaluated physically in the gym," says Murdoch. "He could learn all of the procedural stuff you go through in the car like constant speed runs and settings on the steering wheel. With the simulator, you can get in and programme all of those things in straight away, which takes a lot of stress off and allowed him to concentrate on his driving at the test."

After his first day in the Hispania, Maldonado jumped into the Williams and immediately impressed with his capacity to run through what was a pretty intensive day of test work. With testing at a premium, the two rookie test days are used by teams for far more than just assessing inexperienced drivers; Maldonado had a job to do. His speed was good, even though an engine shutdown towards the end of the day denied him a shot at a low-fuel new tyre run.

"At the start, you need to see what his level is and with the tools Williams have in the simulator and the gym, you can see how he behaves," says Pujolar. "But you want to see him in the car and driving, when everything becomes more natural. There are a lot of different switches and functions on the steering wheel and if he needed to concentrate on that while driving the car, he would not be able to put his full attention on driving. So when he drove the Williams, he was able to do a reasonable job from day one."

With Maldonado's place at the team announced on December 1, attention turned to the serious preparation for his F1 debut.

An early Barcelona outing highlighted where improvements were needed © LAT

Pre-season testing

Maldonado didn't get back into an F1 car until testing got underway at Valencia in the first week of February, so there was plenty of time to get back in the simulator over the winter.

It didn't take him long to convince the team of his raw pace, but it was clear that there was a little work to do in terms of tyre preservation. The switch to Pirelli rubber has placed a premium on such skills and it's fair to say that Maldonado historically had something of a reputation for tyre chewing. But he was far from the only driver who took a while to adapt and it was the core speed that caught the attention. That and, as Barrichello pointed out, the speed with which he assimilated the complex demands of operating a 21st century F1 car with the added hassle of DRS and KERS operation.

"Normally with young drivers, they will be okay on a normal level of fuel and old tyres," says Pujolar. "But then you put on new rubber and they will struggle to use that grip. But from the beginning, Pastor was more or less there on old tyres and then when you put on fresh rubber, bam! He was there. That made us say 'wow, he's quick' because not everyone is able to do that, especially with no experience. So our focus had to be on backing off during the long runs."

This is far more difficult than it sounds. It's not simply about going slower, but about maintaining good lap time while at the same time not overworking the tyres. Look how much trouble even vastly experienced drivers like Mark Webber have had adapting.

"An F1 car is a little more sensitive than what he had driven before," says Murdoch. "There's more power, you have to look after the tyres and there are a lot of things to deal with. Brakes, for example. There's a lot of time in getting the braking profile exactly right and therefore not using the tyres too much.

"With the Pirellis, you have to be very careful not to ask too much of them when they are heavily laterally loaded in the corners. A driver normally has to go through a few tests or races doing it their way with the high tyre wear and then they need to come back a bit. You cannot grab an F1 car by the scruff of the neck over a race distance."

Murdoch is Maldonado's data engineer © LAT

Already, Pujolar and Murdoch were getting an impression of a driver who really could cut it in F1. For a driver reputed to be something of a rock ape (earned during his earlier days in GP2), he was proving himself to be intelligent enough to do what the engineers needed him to do.

"Every time we tell him that you need to do this or that on a long run or try these maps, he understands what we say and he does it," says Pujolar. "Some drivers say they understand, but they are not able to do it. That has been a big help in terms of his progression in F1."

Race driver

Maldonado headed to Melbourne for his F1 debut a little undercooked. That's not unusual in an era of draconian restrictions of test running. The lack of running both during February and his early races didn't help.

"He took a while to get used to the car and during winter testing; Developing the KERS lost us a lot of track time," says Pujolar. "So his mileage before Melbourne was very limited. Then we had the problem in the race and in Malaysia we had another problem. There was just not enough running. The speed was there, but we needed long runs."

A gearbox failure in Australia and a coil problem at Sepang restricted Maldonado to a grand total of 17 racing laps in his first two grands prix. No wonder he struggled to catch the attention, and with a couple of off-track moments - including an embarrassing shunt in the pitlane during practice in Malaysia - he was being written off by some. Especially as the sight of Williams #12 off the track, its driver sawing at the wheel, during practice was become a little too familiar

It wasn't until the fifth round of the championship that things started to come together. He reached Q3 for the first time in Spain and although the race pace of the Williams made points impossible, that qualifying performance was the first time that Maldonado forced the paddock to sit up and take notice. To those who had ignored his GP2 success and looked only at his backing, that was a surprise.

He was on course for fifth at Monaco before Hamilton intervened © LAT

At the next race, he was one of the star performers.

Monaco

Maldonado headed to his first Monaco Grand Prix as an F1 driver with a fantastic reputation around the streets of the principality, but would he be able to convert Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2-winning pedigree into a strong turn at the top level? The answer was a resounding yes.

He qualified in the top 10 and was running a remarkable fifth until that infamous clash with Lewis Hamilton at Ste Devote, a move that earned the McLaren driver a penalty. But to Pujolar and Murdoch, this was no giant stride forward, merely part of the learning curve that had convinced them that Maldonado had the goods to deliver.

"There was not step change in Monaco," says Murdoch. "I suppose it's one of those things that you don't notice because you work with him every day. But as time goes on, it gets easier. Everything is now more a decision between the three of us rather than us showing him the way."

Pujolar agrees that the Maldonado that we saw at Monaco was the same driver that turns up to the rest of the races. Albeit with the demands of the track magnifying just how quick he can be in qualifying.

"Around Monaco, he's a bit special because maybe he's able to go a bit further than other drivers. Everywhere he has the same style," he says.

"Even though he didn't finish, he was happy to show that he has got the potential. But at the end of the day people don't remember that; they want to see points. It was the same in Canada, where he was very strong and there were potentially points there. But even though we know that he was there, people don't remember how good you are until you have the points."

Maldonado was strong at Silverstone too, where he continued to eclipse Barrichello on single-lap pace by qualifying a career-best seventh. It was the highest grid position for a Williams this year, although both he and his team-mate finished deep in the midfield after both struggled for grip in the damp early stages of the race.

Xevi Pujolar is the race engineer behind Maldonado's season © sutton

But since those early steps, Maldonado has made huge strides towards become a fully-rounded grand prix driver. Including chipping away at the tyre degradation problems that everyone has had to battle with.

"He has improved," says Murdoch. "He has learned to switch it on when he needs to in qualifying. But then he can come back a step and return to smaller steering inputs, loading the car up more progressively and being smoother on the throttle."

The bottom line

Maldonado's form so far this year is an object lesson in not judging a driver purely by results. He's still at the promising stage and far from the finished article, but those that know him best reckon that he has proved himself beyond any doubt to be worthy of his place at the team.

First and foremost, he has not been shown up by F1's most experienced driver.

"I knew Pastor was strong, but I thought he would struggle more with Rubens because he is absolutely a top driver," says Pujolar. And Murdoch agrees.

"It was halfway through last year before the Hulk [Nico Hulkenberg] got on top of Rubens," adds Murdoch. "To be as close as he is at this stage is impressive."

Pujolar goes as far as to tip him as a potential title winner, saying that "if he keeps going like this, you will see that he is a potential world champion."

Even if you put that bold statement partly down to the loyalty of a race engineer, you cannot question the fact that Maldonado has gained the confidence of his crew. Moneybags drivers who are only there because they have bought their way in generally don't do that, and often raise the ire of their crews. Remember the story of Tyrrell mechanics transposing the R and the T in (unfairly maligned) driver Riccardo Rosset's name in 1998? Whether apocryphal or not, it illustrates a point that patience for underachieving drivers is far from limitless.

"He gives you confidence," says Murdoch. "You know when it comes to qualifying that he is going to get the time out of the car. Sometimes the weekend doesn't go to plan, so it's important that the driver can settle down. And he can do it."

Given that qualifying is traditionally one of the more difficult challenges for a rookie driver to master, that says a lot about Maldonado's progress. Granted, there are still question marks over his race runs, but Barrichello has hardly been able to set the world alight - scoring only four points.

For Pujolar, it's time to regard his Venezuelan charge as an established F1 driver.

"Everyone still thinks he's a new driver," says Pujolar. "But to be considered as an established driver, we need to be in the points two or three times in a row. That's not only about Pastor, but it needs to come from the car as well. That's what we are missing.

"He's still improving, but we're not talking about a young driver any more. He's a proper F1 driver."