{"id":6571,"date":"2010-06-25T18:32:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T22:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=6571"},"modified":"2010-06-25T18:32:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T22:32:29","slug":"venezuela-backing-maldonado-for-f1-race-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/venezuela-backing-maldonado-for-f1-race-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela backing Maldonado for F1 race seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GP2 championship leader Pastor Maldonado claims Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez wants him to debut in formula one.<\/p>\n<p>The well-sponsored 25-year-old has been linked with F1 seats several times, including when he was close to inking a deal with the hopeful Serbian outfit Stefan GP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were nearly ready to sign &#8230; but at the end it didn&#8217;t get an entry,&#8221; he told Reuters at Valencia on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The news agency said Maldonado is backed by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Venezuela is pushing very hard for me, to have me in formula one,&#8221; he confirmed.\u00a0 &#8220;All my sponsors are from Venezuela so that&#8217;s a big support.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He (Chavez) is pushing.\u00a0 I know that,&#8221; Maldonado, also a contender for a Campos\/HRT seat in 2010, added.<\/p>\n<p>He said president Chavez is also interested in hosting a grand prix, possibly off the northeastern coast of the country on Margarita Island.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GP2 championship leader Pastor Maldonado claims Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez wants him to debut in formula one. The well-sponsored 25-year-old has been linked with F1 seats several times, including when he was close to inking a deal with the hopeful Serbian outfit Stefan GP. &#8220;We were nearly ready to sign &#8230; but at the end &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,1843,1842,1844],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571"}],"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=6571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6572,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571\/revisions\/6572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}