Pastor Maldonado has confirmed rampant speculation that he has lost his race seat in formula one.<\/p>\n
Before the Renault buyout, Lotus re-signed the controversial 30-year-old for 2016 but there have been reported problems between the Enstone team’s new owner and his backer PDVSA, the struggling Venezuelan state-owned oil company.<\/p>\n
“Today I most humbly inform you that I will not be on the starting grid for the 2016 F1 season,” Maldonado wrote in a Spanish-language statement linked to his Twitter account.<\/p>\n
“Thanks for all your messages of support, passion and concern for my future.\u00a0 See you soon,” he added.<\/p>\n
The news paves the road for the confirmation on Wednesday of the arrival at Renault of Kevin Magnussen.<\/p>\n
Jacob Hammerholt, a sports reporter for the Danish broadcaster TV2, said the impending announcement in Paris will be welcomed by the enthusiastic country.<\/p>\n
“Kevin and Renault is a really good match,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When he came to McLaren, it was a great team that expected a lot and put a lot of pressure on a young driver.\u00a0 But Renault enters formula one as a works team after a break, so they know they will have to get the ball rolling before it becomes really great,” added Hammerholt.<\/p>\n
There are also rumours that French youngster Esteban Ocon, the reigning GP3 champion, could be loaned by Mercedes to Renault to be reserve driver in 2016.<\/p>\n
And Italy’s Omnicorse reports that Pascal Wehrlein, the new Mercedes-backed champion of DTM, looks set to secure a race seat at Manor this year, probably to be paired with fellow rookie Rio Haryanto.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pastor Maldonado has confirmed rampant speculation that he has lost his race seat in formula one. Before the Renault buyout, Lotus re-signed the controversial 30-year-old for 2016 but there have been reported problems between the Enstone team’s new owner and his backer PDVSA, the struggling Venezuelan state-owned oil company. “Today I most humbly inform you …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5515,5262,5340,3596,5165,5123,1842,501,2412],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32807"}],"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=32807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32809,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32807\/revisions\/32809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}