Pastor Maldonado’s cousin will step up to single seater racing in 2016 after confirming his entry to the Italian Formula 4 series with Cram Motorsport.
Manuel Maldonado, 15, has spent his time racing in British and European karting championships over the past few years.
Maldonado will race for Cram Motorsport in the third year of the Italian F4 series, which was created as part of the FIA’s drive to re-structure junior motorsport from karting to Formula 1.
Cram Motorsport was also where Pastor Maldonado made his single seater racing debut back in 2003 and with whom he won the Italian Formula Renault 2.0 title in 2004 that gained him widespread attention.
Despite only being two years old, Italian F4 has already proven to be a useful training ground for young drivers such as Lance Stroll, who is now part of Williams’ driver academy and is racing in this weekend’s Daytona 24 for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Interestingly, Manuel Maldonado appears to have a more concrete idea of his racing plans for 2016 than his esteemed cousin following the news that Renault may drop Pastor Maldonado from its F1 line-up in favor of Kevin Magnussen.