Once Venezuela’s seven-day mourning period is concluded, elections loom, and
there is no telling in the jostle for power how safe Maldonado’s prospects
will be. Last year the opposition party claimed indignantly that an annual
sum of £29 million would be far better channelled towards hospitals and
roads, in a land ravaged by poverty, than on making one man an emblem in the
world’s most notoriously expensive sporting enterprise.
Truly, F1 has never been such a plutocracy. It passed almost unnoticed over
the weekend’s final test in Barcelona, but talented young Brazilian Luiz
Razia was ejected by Marussia at the last minute for failing to meet the
requisite £5 million starting price. It was the most chastening indignity in
an environment rapidly becoming even more divorced from reality than the
cartoon logo on the back of McLaren’s 2013 car.
Just consider the case of latest McLaren recruit Sergio Pérez, who arrives at
Woking clutching a pot of Mexican gold courtesy of his backing by Carlos
Slim Jr, heir to Telmex and son of the richest man on earth. Such war chests
are a relatively new phenomenon; in 2008, Force India’s Adrian Sutil was the
single pay driver in the line-up. No wonder Jarno Trulli, who lost out at
Caterham last season to the Russian-bankrolled Vitaly Petrov, lamented:
“It’s all about money and sponsors these days.”
There are few quibbles about the driving prowess of the men in question.
Maldonado won a GP2 title in 2010, albeit at the fourth attempt, while Pérez
was a standout performer before his transfer to join Jenson Button in
McLaren colours. But this creeping colonisation by pay drivers remains a
disturbing trend. Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren’s team principal, argued that it
served only to exclude the entry of the best young professional drivers.
But how can one preach to teams when they continue to protest at being denied
a fair portion of the riches? Bernie Ecclestone’s harvesting of the world’s
finest brands to hitch themselves to the F1 wagon is widely lauded as a
masterpiece of management, but the fact remains that 40 per cent of revenue
flows to a third party in the shape of private equity firm CVC Capital
Partners. Williams, as many others, have thus felt empowered to augment
their incomes however they see fit, even if it has meant accepting vast
totals of oil money from the controversial Chávez regime.
So spare a moment’s pause for Maldonado, when he lines up for the Australian
Grand Prix in Melbourne in 10 days’ time. His very presence on the grid
might be divisive, but there are few 27-year-olds whose livelihood is
determined not only by the whim of a kindly oligarch, but by the political
machinations of an entire country.
F1 can be a parallel universe at the best of times, but never more so for this
smiling Croesus from Caracas.