Maldonado pays the penalty

24/06/2012

Pastor Maldonado, Jean-Eric Vergne and Kamui Kobayashi have all been penalised as a result of incidents in today's European Grand Prix.

In the closing stages of the race it was confirmed that Kobayashi would receive a five-place grid penalty at Silverstone for the incident in which he hit Felipe Massa in Turn 10, the Japanese adjudged as having "caused a collision", a breach of Article 16.1 of the Sporting Regulations.

Vergne, who was adjudged of causing a collision with Heikki Kovalainen was hit with two penalties such, in the stewards' opinion, was the seriousness of the matter.

As well as being fined 25,000 euros, the Toro Rosso driver has incurred a ten-place penalty at next month's British Grand Prix.

Pastor Maldonado, like Kobayashi and Vergne, was also adjudged as having breached Article 16.1 of the Sporting Regulations - causing a collision - by dint failing to rejoin the track in a safe manner (Article 20.2) however he only incurred a drive-through penalty. That said, since the race was over he had 20s added to his time, thereby droppingd him to twelfth overall and promoting teammate Bruno Senna to tenth place.

On what was a busy day for them, the stewards also considered a report that Michael Schumacher used his DRS in a yellow flag zone and that this constituted a breach of Yellow Flag regulations (Appendix H Article 2.4.5.1(b)).

However, having examined the relevant telemetry and video evidence, and heard from the driver and team representatives, they noted that the driver did make a significant reduction in speed on entering the double waved flag zone.

Pointing out that today's incident differed from that at Barcelona when Sebastian Vettel was penalised for using his DRS under the yellow flags, the stewards deemed that no further action was necessary.

Check out our Grand Prix gallery, here.