Pastor Maldonado has defended his reputation as the ‘crash king’ of formula one.<\/p>\n
Following the controversial Venezuelan’s latest crash – with Marcus Ericsson in Brazil – former double world champion Mika Hakkinen hit out, insisting that “tougher sanctions” should be applied because “Maldonado does not seem to learn anything from his mistakes”.<\/p>\n
But the Lotus driver, who brings millions to his race seat in the form of Venezuelan state oil funding, insisted: “I have always had the balls to go over the limit.<\/p>\n
“I have always driven very aggressively.\u00a0 All my career,” Maldonado, 30, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.<\/p>\n
“When I put on my helmet, I go as fast as I can.\u00a0 And sometimes even more.\u00a0 Sometimes you make this mistake, but to explore the boundaries, you have to exceed them.<\/p>\n
“Even from my first race in karts, with cushions on the seat so that I could see, I was always a daredevil.\u00a0 All or nothing, that was my motto.”<\/p>\n
But when asked about all of his incidents and crashes in F1, the pinnacle of motor racing, Maldonado insisted: “It’s part of the game.<\/p>\n
“Other drivers also crash and no one talks about it afterwards.\u00a0 I crash and immediately it’s a scandal.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes I think it’s not fair that it’s always (said to be) my fault.”<\/p>\n
Maldonado says that despite his reputation as F1’s regular crasher, he actually has many friends in the paddock.<\/p>\n
“More than you would think!” he said.\u00a0 “Probably more than Lewis Hamilton, for example.<\/p>\n
“I’m friends with Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, and I even get along well with Sergio Perez, even though we have had tough battles for many years.”<\/p>\n
Asked if he thinks he could keep up with the reigning triple world champion Hamilton at Mercedes, Maldonado answered: “I would like to find out!<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately I have not had the chance to sit in a winning car, but I believe that if I was at Mercedes I could keep up with Lewis.\u00a0 I definitely have enough ambition and fighting spirit.<\/p>\n
“And I know I have the talent to beat him.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pastor Maldonado has defended his reputation as the ‘crash king’ of formula one. Following the controversial Venezuelan’s latest crash – with Marcus Ericsson in Brazil – former double world champion Mika Hakkinen hit out, insisting that “tougher sanctions” should be applied because “Maldonado does not seem to learn anything from his mistakes”. But the Lotus …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,310,1842],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31607,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31605\/revisions\/31607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}