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F1 EXCLUSIVE - Williams F1 announce The Maldonator

Topics: Williams F1, Pastor Maldonado

F1 EXCLUSIVE - Williams F1 announce The Maldonator

Matt Hubbard
Speedmonkey
July 8, 2012

In an extraordinary move the Williams F1 Team have exclusively handed the following press release to Speedmonkey:

WILLIAMS F1 TEAM IN CONJUNCTION WITH WILLIAMS HYBRID POWER ANNOUNCE 'THE MALDONATOR'

When Pastor Maldonado joined Williams F1 he really was a lovely chap. But we always knew he only had one Grand Prix win in him. Williams F1 always consults with Mystic Meg when we hire new drivers and Meg confirmed that he would win his one and only race towards the start of the 2012 season. Therefore, following his spectacular victory in Barcelona, the board held a meeting to decide what our next steps would be.

We considered several options and, in the light of Michael Schumacher's re-emergence, had decided to hire Nigel Mansell. Sir Frank had sent someone to find Nigel's phone number when Ian Foley, MD of Williams Hybrid Power, put his hand up. He was initially ignored but after ten minutes (by which point his arm was aching and he had to hold it up with his other hand) Frank got bored of ignoring him and pointed the 'speak' stick at Ian.

Ian's idea was a revelation. Williams Hybrid Power had been conducting research into new areas other than KERS. One was full size Scalextric cars and the other was humanoid cyborgs. Williams Hybrid Power had already built a prototype - the Sam Michaelnator - but it was found to be faulty and when it attacked Adam Parr it was sold to McLaren F1. Ian proposed that the real Pastor be replaced with a cyborg.

Frank immediately seized on the idea and The Maldonator was commissioned.

The real Pastor Maldonado was packed off to Venezuela. Ian Foley takes up the story:

"We only had two weeks to build The Maldonator and programme it to drive a Formula 1 car. Frank told me that it needed to be programmed so that if it was not in a position to win a race then it should start to systematically take out the whole field so that Bruno Senna could win. Luckily we had several prototypes ready to go so all we had to do was recreate the face and get the software jockeys to write the programme. Visually I think we did a good job but we did forget to include the braces so were nearly rumbled.

The Maldonator was finished on May 23rd. It spent 24 hours in the simulator and was then packed off to Monaco. That race saw some teething problems and it crashed into Sergio Perez during one of the practice sessions and then Pedro de la Rosa in the race."

Following the Monaco race The Maldonator was refined and was once again deployed in Canada. Sir Frank Williams is the only person who can control The Maldonator once it has been deployed (via a remote kill switch) and unfortunately during Q2 Sir Frank dozed off and his hand slumped onto the switch. The Maldonator was temporarily disabled and immediately crashed into the wall of champions. It did quite well in the race but dropped out of the points after it's pit stop. Unfortunately the qualifying crash had destroyed some of it's circuits so it malfunctioned and was not able to Maldonate any of the opposition.

The European Grand Prix in Valencia was so nearly a success for The Maldonator. It qualified well and was running in the points when the safety car came out. It was then dropped to tenth but started to come back through the field. Unfortunately the field-awareness aspect of its software failed and it didn't realise that other cars were also on the circuit. Ultimately it crashed into Lewis Hamilton.

Before the British Grand Prix at Silverstone The Maldonator underwent a complete reprogramming. On the journey into Silverstone on the Friday morning some water entered it and it went haywire - but it was patched up and qualified in seventh. We thought it would be okay for the race but it temporarily malfunctioned and slipped back down the field. Realising it was not going to win, and Bruno was doing OK, it went into Maldonate mode. Sergio Perez was it's first victim. The Maldonator allowed Perez to think it was going to overtake but then it pounced and smashed into Perez's Sauber. We at Williams were overjoyed and were looking forward to The Maldonator continuing to Maldonate the whole field, except Bruno of course, but unfortunately it malfunctioned again and just trundled round at the back. The Maldonator finished 16th.

We think the rain caused the problems at Silverstone and are confident that at the next race, in Germany, the Maldonator will either win or Maldonate the whole field which will allow Bruno to win.

ENDS

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Speedmonkey is grateful to the Williams F1 Team for allowing us exclusive use of this press release. We are sure the whole F1 fraternity will be backing the Maldonator to Maldonate its way to success.

Meanwhile in separate news we have heard a whisper that Ferrari may have used similar technology to create the Massanator. If true then The Massanator seems to be having more success than both it's real life counterpart and also The Maldonator. Williams had better watch out!