The 2011 season was the worst Williams had ever known: ninth in the constructors' championship, with five points. The team was overhauled. Mike Coughlan came in, the former McLaren designer who had served his suspension after the 2007 espionage case, and Jason Somerville became head of aerodynamics. Renault returned as well, the engine supplier behind Williams' finest years between 1989 and 1997. The colours returned as well: the blue and white of the FW34 drew on the FW19 of 1997.
The car was better than its predecessor from the start. In Australia Maldonado was behind Alonso in fifth place on the last lap when he ran onto the (artificial) grass and spun into the wall. In Malaysia he retired shortly before the end. The first reward came in China, with eighth place. Nothing suggested that three weeks after Bahrain he would be racing for the win.
In qualifying in Barcelona Lewis Hamilton was fastest. But McLaren told him to stop on track after his final lap, because the car did not hold enough fuel for the mandatory sample. Hamilton was excluded from the results and had to start from the back. That gave Maldonado the first pole position of his career, seventeen thousandths ahead of Alonso.
At the start Alonso went past him, in front of his home crowd. Maldonado took the lead back during the second round of pit stops. His third stop ran long because of a tyre problem and Kimi Räikkönen briefly led, but by lap 47 Maldonado was first again. Alonso closed in and stayed there until the flag, but never got by. The margin was just over three seconds. Williams had not won since Juan Pablo Montoya in Brazil in 2004, and Maldonado remains the only Venezuelan to have won a Grand Prix.
About ninety minutes after the race, shortly after the team photographs, the garage caught fire. According to the reports it began with a leaking fuel rig at Bruno Senna's car. Neighbouring teams Force India and Caterham helped to put it out. Thirty-one people were hurt by burns or smoke, seven went to hospital and all were later released. Maldonado carried his twelve-year-old cousin Manuel, who had a broken foot, to safety. The winning car itself was not in the garage at the time.
There was no repeat. Maldonado's best result for the rest of the year was fifth in Abu Dhabi, and his season filled up with penalties and accidents. In Monaco, two weeks after his win, he started last and his race was over on the first lap. Williams finished eighth with 76 points. Since that afternoon in Barcelona the team has not won another race.
My model comes from the F1 Collection, booklet 58. I bought it in 2024 from Carmodel. It is the model of the last Williams to win a Grand Prix.