F1: Maldonado Grid Penalty Gives Alonso A Boost

Formula 1

F1: Maldonado Grid Penalty Gives Alonso A Boost

With a 10-place grid penalty on Pastor Maldonado, Fernando Alonso moves from eighth to seventh on the Brazil grid...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 24, 2012 Sao Paulo (BRA)

Pastor Maldonado has had more than one grid penalty this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Fernando Alonso has once again benefited from a grid penalty, although this one was outside the control of Ferrari.

Pastor Maldonado was given a reprimand after missing a weight check during qualifying, and as it was his third of the year, the Williams driver has earned a 10-place penalty under Article 18.2 of the sporting regulations. An automatic penalty results from three reprimands within a season.

Alonso now moves up from eighth on the grid to seventh, which is exactly what happened in Austin last week, although the change from the dirty to clean side created an extra impact.

The top eight now are now Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel, Felipe Massa, Nico Hulkenberg, Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen.

No action was taken by the FIA on the incident involving Pedro de la Rosa and Romain Grosjean.

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.