Why Williams signed Maldonado

Pastor Maldonado's deal with Williams has been characterised as the team 'selling out', but Edd Straw argues that there is a lot more to the GP2 champion's arrival in Formula 1

There's no doubting what the motivation behind Williams dropping Nico Hulkenberg and taking on his successor as GP2 champion, Pastor Maldonado, is. At its most basic level, it's easy to leap to the conclusion that the seat was available to the highest bidder and that the team's ambition has once again slid from success to mere survival, but it's a non sequitur.

The fact is, Williams is as big a victim of the global economic crisis as any team on the grid. A fully independent operation, it is dependent on its commercial success to thrive, which is why the company as a whole has worked hard to diversify into areas outside of Formula 1 with projects like its hybrid technologies that are as likely to be fitted to a bus as they are to a Porsche.

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