Williams boss Toto Wolff convinced Pastor Maldonado will grow through struggles

The Venezuelan took a sensational victory in the Spanish Grand Prix in May, holding off Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso to give Williams its first win since 2004.

Since then however, Maldonado has not scored a point and has been involved in several incidents resulting in penalties that cost potential points for him and his team.

Wolff feels Maldonado's incident in the Monaco GP - where he crashed into Sauber's Sergio Perez - has been key in his driver's decline in form since his victory.

"He's got a huge raw talent - he is extremely fast. And he is a nice guy, which is important because you need to be socially competent to function in that environment," said Wolff in an interview with the official Formula 1 website.

"The new generation of drivers needs to be like that.

"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.

"Remember Ayrton Senna in the beginning? Nobody wanted to touch him. In those days there weren't many grid penalties, but had there been he would probably have had to go back 10 places on the grid many times. (laughs)"

Wolff said Williams is still considering its options for its 2013 line-up, and although he admitted the team will not want to wait long to sort it out, he conceded he did not want to distract Maldonado or team-mate Bruno Senna during the season.

"It's too early to say. 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."

He added: "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.

"Whether it will be in-season or not, I don't know yet, but we don't want to drag it out too long. "