Maldonado says he is the only driver supported by PDVSA

[Nigel Red5]

Where does it say Father Maldonado?

A "Pastor" is a shepherd and a damn good taco.

[Anwin]

If he loses his money for F1 why would it suddenly be approved for Indycar? The Evil America even got namechecked by one of the ministers when he talked about Racecargate.

Here's the trick with Venezuelan politics. They blame EVERYTHING on someone else. And America is their prime target. No matter if the evidence 100% put the blame on them, they're gonna ride that horse until they keep beating it post-mortem.

[Rossfeld]

Thanks for the foreign policy tip It only makes it even less likely that Maldonado would race in America with PDVSA backing.

[Bullers]

Remember last season when Viso was considering starting his own team and bringing in new talent from his country? What better way funnel money than through your own business? Yet he signed with Andretti. Hmmm...I don't know if Viso is guilty of anything, but there is a lot of movement around Pastor and Williams right now. And Pastor has been running his mouth an awful lot even for a Formula 1 driver.

[neti1]

Here's the trick with Venezuelan politics. They blame EVERYTHING on someone else. And America is their prime target. No matter if the evidence 100% put the blame on them, they're gonna ride that horse until they keep beating it post-mortem.

[drdisque]

And for how much the party line is how evil the US is - nearly every Venezuelan has some ties to the US and most of them would move here at the drop of a hat if given the chance.

[Privateer]

Perhaps he's saying that I'm the only one who should be getting money?

That or he's never been bright to begin with. They've clearly been supporting Viso and Johnny Cecotto Jr., and in the past Milka Duno.

Remember last season when Viso was considering starting his own team and bringing in new talent from his country? What better way funnel money than through your own business? Yet he signed with Andretti. Hmmm...I don't know if Viso is guilty of anything, but there is a lot of movement around Pastor and Williams right now. And Pastor has been running his mouth an awful lot even for a Formula 1 driver.

Reading the thread on this over at Ten Tenths, PDVSA is giving $46 million to Williams annually for a Venezuelan driver to be in the car, which is currently Pastor Maldonado. If Maldonado does leave the team, I question what kind of state Williams would actually be in next year. The best marketing agent in the world can't replace $46 million at the drop of the hat.

[Privateer]

The more I read and think about this, the more I think that the guys implicated have to be Viso and Enzo Potolicchio

Think about it, a few years ago, Viso was an unheralded pay driver and now he's owns a car on one of the top teams in the sport and ins funding drivers through the ladder system. A few years ago Potolicchio was a no-name semi-pro F2000 driver, now he runs a multi-million dollar sports car team.

The system appears to have gone something like this:

Bolivars ---official transaction---> Dollars -----black market transaction----> A whole lot more Bolivars

now having a whole lot more Bolivars is nice, however, if you're a racing driver in the US, they're not terribly useful. To get that money out of Venezuela you have to go back to the official market and ask for more Dollars. To do that you have to come up with some reason to justify why you're going back and asking for more dollars, thus Viso and Potolicchio starting their own race teams. The revenue (prize money, any US sponsorship, pay drivers in the sports cars) will be paid in dollars, effectively "laundering" the money invested on the race team. In addition, anything sold off from the race team will also be in Dollars with no requirement to trade it back in for Bolivars, also "laundering" it.

Curt Cavin in the past year on Trackside had an interesting point of he was talking to someone asking him who he thought the highest-paid driver in the Indycar paddock was. The driver turned it around on him asking if he meant highest paid or highest salary-paid driver in the paddock. Cavin hadn't considered the difference, but the unnamed driver's contention was that Viso was the highest-paid driver in the paddock because he arranges all his funding and then gives a portion of it to whatever team he decides to drive for.