A few months ago PDVSA promised Lotus $40m if they let Pastor Maldonado drive in Formula 1. In a shock move today, the other drivers in the 2014 championship have now promised Lotus $42m if they don’t.

‘Enough is enough. The rest of the field had to take action before he took them all out,’ said source close to the drivers’ coalition. ‘So they had a whip round and they reckon they’ve got enough to outbid the Venezuelans, plus a bit left over to replace the useless lunatic with lovely dependable Nick Heidfeld who is really good at getting out of the way and basically drives for tips.’

Our source claims the only drivers who haven’t pitched in to buy the freewheeling pay driver’s absence from F1 are Fernando Alonso, who is too busy huffing around saying he’s not going to win anything, and Jenson Button whose season has been so disappointing he thinks having an erratic Venezuelan buffoon on the track can’t make things any worse.

‘This isn’t cheap for the drivers but they think it’s worth it,’ our source admitted. ‘Also, they hope to get some of the cash back with donations from the crowds after reminding them that, without this buy out, they could have been hit in the eye by a flying piece of carbon fibre when Maldonado twatted into another car on lap 24 as usual.’

To find out if the new offer had been accepted, Sniff Petrol attempted to speak to Pastor Maldonado via Skype but he had somehow managed to crash his computer.

With thanks to Omar Quiroga