Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren reprimanded for Alonso error

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McLaren has been reprimanded after fitting the wrong tyre to Fernando Alonso's car during qualifying for the British Grand Prix.

Alonso was fitted with one of the tyres allocated to Jenson Button's car during Q1, with the team being called to the stewards to explain the error. Following an investigation, the stewards opted to reprimand McLaren rather than handing out any penalty to Alonso.

Explaining how the incident happened, racing director Eric Boullier says it was simply a case of miscommunication.

"What happened is we had a double pit stop with both cars," Boullier said. "There was a little bit of confusion caused by Jenson being stopped at the FIA scales and one of the tyres of Jenson was put on Fernando's car."

Button then joked: "That's why he was so quick!"

As a result, Alonso retains his grid slot of 17th place ahead of team-mate Button in 18th, Will Stevens 19th and Roberto Merhi 20th.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.