Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Maldonado handed more penalty points

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Pastor Maldonado has been handed three penalty points for speeding under the safety car in the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The Lotus driver was handed a 10 second time penalty during the race because he "failed to stay above the minimum time set by the FIA ECU during the deployment of the safety car".

As well as the in-race penalty, Maldonado was handed three penalty points for the discrepancy, which brings him up to eight penalty points in total over the past 12 months. Drivers will receive a one race ban if they exceed 12 penalty points in the same time.

However, Maldonado will only be on eight points for a short amount of time, with three points set to expire before the Chinese Grand Prix.

Force India drivers Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg both received two penalty points each at Sepang for causing collisions with Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat respectively.

Deputy team principal Bob Fernley told F1i after the race he felt the stewards should be more lenient when it comes to racing incidents.

"I thought Nico's was quite harsh, personally," Fernley said. "But I can't see it from all the angles that the stewards can see it from so it's not fair to make a comment on it really.

"We started to get down a process where unless it's a really blatant, dangerous manoeuvre, it's racing. The idea of throwing a penalty at every incident still worries me a little bit. We're taking away what racing is all about.

"They're just marginal decisions and I think marginal should be a racing incident."

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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.