Pastor Maldonado has been penalised three places by the FIA stewards for impeding Nico Hulkenberg during Q1.
The Venezuelan had done a great job to qualify third, so he now drops back to sixth, having gifted places to Kimi Raikkonen, Sergio Perez, and Fernando Alonso.
The stewards said: “The driver of car 18 was warned by his team not to ‘hold up’ car 12 which was behind him, and yet he clearly did impede car 12. However as car 12 continued into Q2 a more severe penalty was not considered appropriate.”
Before the penalty was announced the Williams man was optimistic about his prospects for Sunday.
“We were optimistic for this race,” he said. “Maybe this morning I was a little bit more worried because the car doesn’t look quite good. But during the qualifying I was adapting myself to the car and adapting myself to the different conditions and the track was changing and improving at the same time.
“After Q1 I saw the potential we had, a bit less in Q2, we were nearly out, P10. I was a bit worried about that because the lap wasn’t that good. In Q3 I pushed very much, at the maximum. I got a clean lap. We are not that fast, like Jenson, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow. In the past we’ve had very good pace in the races so looking forward.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Still, doesn’t feel right. With Alonso’s grid position involved in it, one can’t help but feel it’s yet another case of Ferrari International Assistance in action.
I’d feel more comfortable if something like this resulted in a fine. Hulkenberg made it through to Q2 and didn’t need to use an extra set of tyres. There was no impact to the outcome of qualifying so I don’t see a reason for this type of penalization. That is unless he was found to be purposely impeding Hulkenberg. Maldonado does have a history of being involved in incidents and this may be an attempt to send a message but unnecessarily changing the outcome of qualifying is a very drastic step.