Five-second penalty for Jenson Button in China
Jenson Button was penalized five seconds for his collision with Pastor Maldonado. This causes him to lose a place, from 13th to 14th. Fernando Alonso did barely better, finishing 12th.
After the qualifications, both McLaren drivers had stated that they wanted to do better than in Malaysia, where they had retired. Their goal was to finish the race in order to gather valuable data for the development of their car and their Honda engine.
Aside from angering Kimi Räikkönen when he was lapped, the highlight of McLaren’s race was the long battle between Jenson Button and Pastor Maldonado for many laps. Unfortunately, it ended in a collision at the end of the straight, for which the Briton was found guilty. He was therefore penalized five seconds after the race, costing him a position as all drivers were nose to tail following the entry of the safety car.
The 2009 champion admitted he made a judgment error on this maneuver: « With regard to the collision with Pastor, I thought there was room on the inside. You never want to have a collision. I guess it’s a judgment error on my part. »
As for Fernando Alonso, he is only satisfied with the laps completed during the race: We still have a lot to learn about the car to get the most out of it, but an afternoon like this is extremely useful for us since it helped us better understand the car. It was a useful race for me too: my longest stint during winter testing was 12 laps, in Malaysia I did 22, and here I finished the race. So it’s a step forward.
However, the next race in Bahrain takes place in only a week. Therefore, the engineers from McLaren and Honda will have very little time to analyze the data and translate it into additional performance.
