In the world of 21st century social media, it can feel that everything is drawn in black and white. There is no room for complex shading; something is good or bad, hilarious or pathetic, genius or a total waste of time. Anything else is just too complicated to condense into 140 characters.
In Formula One’s corner of the online world, Pastor Maldonado’s persona was very easy too establish: the comic anti-hero. The Venezuelan was lampooned and criticised after every collision and off-track excursion, of which there were many. His face was photoshopped on to famous disaster scenes, and a website was launched informing fans of whether he’d crashed today. Some were genuinely affronted by his presence in the sport; others thought it part of the entertainment. He was either ‘the worst driver in the history F1’ or ‘the only thing that’s made the past few seasons watchable’. In reality, he was neither of those things.
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At times it could be pretty funny, and it was not wholly unfair. Maldonado crashed at lot, certainly more frequently than his rivals, yet he was unable to accept blame or mend his ways. In fact, he did things that almost seemed planned by a social media adviser so as to gain maximum Twitter traction, such as telling his team “I crash” after binning it on his way into the pits in China. Two very loaded words, perfect when written large across an image. Yes, Maldonado created his own memes.
It was an oversimplification, however, and even his better moments became opportunities to poke fun, proof that a broken clock is right twice a day. Maldonado was not the worst driver in F1 – he had moments of genuine brilliance, albeit punctuated by a lot of chaos. Yet even in success, he could only be defined by his failure.
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And so Maldonado – a very serious sportsman who has spent his life pursuing a very serious goal – rapidly became a cartoonish send-up of himself. It’s strange how much the online version of Maldonado fed into our real-life perception of him. Where did #Crashtor stop and Pastor begin? The narrative was so widely accepted that we didn’t get to know the real man. That is a shame, because in truth he was a more interesting character than most of his contemporaries.
Now he is gone, replaced at Renault for the 2016 season by Kevin Magnussen. It is fair to say that Pastor was only ever on the grid for the money he brought – something in the $40m range from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA – while Kevin is more naturally gifted and capable of long-term success. So all is well with the world.
But of course Formula One is not a cartoon TV series with a Twitter conversation running alongside it; the drivers are real people with dreams and emotions. And so, on a human level, it is very hard not to feel sorry for Pastor. He has lost his job and his dreams have been shattered. What’s more, it’s happened six weeks before the opening race of the season, meaning he won’t be on the grid in 2016. I imagine that he is devastated.
This is not to say that his departure from F1 is anything but positive on a sporting level. That Renault (née Lotus) – world champions just 10 years ago – should field a driver whose seat is secured by money alone, in spite of his propensity to crash, was bad for the sport’s image. Some argue that his departure will make Formula One a less interesting place, but if the sport is so dull that a few boneheaded crashes are the main attraction it clearly has some fundamental issues. Maldonado was not exciting: he was error prone and seemingly unable to learn from his mistakes. In other words, he was dangerous.
Another stop on Pastor’s world tour of gravel traps. This one is in Australia | PA Images
It is perhaps a bit much for 140-character debates, but it also seemed wrong for a country that is reportedly on the verge of economic collapse to prop up one driver’s grand prix dream. A slew of funny tweets when he sticks it in the barriers are not worth that.
The truth is that Pastor Maldonado was far more complicated than the black and white online conversation made him. He was a man from a country on the brink of economic ruin who had his seat funded to the tune of $40m. He was an avowed socialist and friend of the late Hugo Chavez, but competed in the most overtly capitalist sport on earth. He was blindingly quick on his day, but he was also capable of the most catastrophic errors. He was once banned from Monaco for life for injuring a marshal, yet it was on the street circuit that he later showed the depth of his natural ability. He was viewed as a loner, but he carried the coffin in tears at his friend Jules Bianchi’s funeral. He was a quiet, seemingly shy guy who wanted to be a sporting icon in his homeland.
And in some ways he truly was. This is a man who held off Fernando Alonso to win the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, a race that the famously relentless Alonso would have sweated blood to win. Maldonado can always be proud of that achievement. I don’t know if Kevin Magnussen is capable of a similar performance.
But over a season, over a career, Renault will get more from Magnussen. The Dane has learned the hard way that if you don’t perform in F1 there is very little quarter given, something Maldonado never had because of the money behind him. And so the only real loss to the Renault team is a $40m-per-season ‘thanks for putting up with Pastor’ cheque from the good people at PDVSA.
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For those who follow F1 the loss will be quite different. But this is not a case of missing the crashes – it is about how the modern audience consumes the sport.
It is fair to say that fans who interact with F1 via social media are affected more in the case of a crash than an overtake (this is not to say they enjoy them more). A crash is more visually dramatic and can often be followed by a safety car, which brings the action to a halt; passes are usually clean, maintain the flow and don’t stop the race.
And so Maldonado really was made for the social media age. The fact that he could flip a rival into a barrel roll was perfect for Twitter, because immediately afterwards the safety car was deployed. That gave viewers a chance to discuss what Pastor had just done: tweet about it, make it into a GIF, pontificate and call him a dick – put simply, to interact. Whereas when Hamilton passes Rosberg for the lead it’s usually pretty clean and there’s not much chance to stop and talk about it. We’re just left waiting to see if Nico throws anything at Lewis afterwards.
Even when Pastor didn’t do anything wrong he provided a storyline – will Maldonado crash today? Has he crashed yet? Wow, Maldonado didn’t crash today. Here’s a meme to that effect.
This was the Maldonado we knew: the cartoon villain, Dick Dastardly with a PDVSA logo on his hat. But in retrospect this all seems far too simple. More than most of his contemporaries, the real Pastor Maldonado could not be condensed into 140 characters.
