F1 driver Pastor Maldonado crashes Williams race car in PR stunt

There is that slight embarrassing moment in front of your friends when performing a silly stunt and then there is this... Pastor Maldonado crashing an F1 car in front of his hometown crowd in Venezuela. In terms of no-no's at Williams Racing, this has to be up there when a simple demo ends up costing $100,000's of dollars, if not more.

In a triumphant return to his country since becoming a Grand Prix winner (yes, the Spanish Grand Prix when his garage caught fire), Maldonado was invited to perform 12 parade laps on the streets of Caracas. But seems the roads on the Fuerte Tiunas parade grounds aren't all that smooth. The Williams FW33 is surely a stuff beast and he lost control on one of the laps, spinning out and crashing into a curb. Witness to this were President Hugo Chavez and 20,000 Venezuelans who couldn't have been too pleased. But nothing could match the disapproval of team owner Sir Frank Williams who was also in attendance and Williams shareholder, Toto Wolff.

We're sure fellow racers E.J. Viso from Indycar and Rodolfo Gonzalez from GP2 were facepalming when the demo laps went sour. Immediately after the crash, Gonzalez took off in his GP2 car for his own demo as there were hopes that the Williams car could be repaired. However, you can see the crash was pretty bad and to add insult, there was an electrical meltdown in the F1 car which eliminated any hope of returning.

To check out the disaster caught on video, hit the jump!