The decision by President Chávez to allow PDVSA to enter into a long-term sponsorship agreement with Williams is undoubtedly a clever move and will create much-needed favorable public relations worldwide. Most analysts commenting on the news are simply unaware of the situation in Venezuela and interpret this as any other sponsorship deal, ignoring the fact that PDVSA, unlike BP, Shell, or Exxon, is a state-owned enterprise. Spending public money from Venezuela on F1 should neither be celebrated nor encouraged, especially when the country has such alarming levels of poverty, homelessness, decaying infrastructure, and its government is busy replicating the communist model of Cuba.
Frank Williams is in for a tough journey, as the notoriously fickle Venezuelan president and his utterly inefficient regime will test him to the limit. This deal will be anything but straightforward, and I sincerely hope Mr. Williams encounters his fair share of headaches along the way, because accepting money from a developing country just to keep afloat in F1 is a repugnant lack of principles.
According to Pastor Maldonado, I predict that his career in F1 will be anything but successful.
*There is an ongoing discussion about this topic on the BBC’s comment page, which is undefined (beware of Chávez followers). More precise comments can be found in “Hugo Chávez now has a F1 team” and “Venezuela invests in the Williams Formula 1 team and installs a ‘socialist’ pay driver.” Noteworthy is this comment: “A group that was able to gather the funds was PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, which managed to contribute $14 million and effectively forced Williams to sign Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado. Maldonado is a declared supporter of President Hugo Chávez, making his signing barely more acceptable than the sponsorship that would occur if the son of a Venezuelan minister were to get a Formula 1 seat.”