Pastor
Maldonado will take a ten-place grid penalty for the Abu Dhabi Grand
Prix as he will be forced to use his ninth engine of the season.
Maldonado's
weekend in India was disrupted by mechanical problems, with a blown
engine in Free Practice 1 being followed up by a gearbox problem when
running a competitive 12th in the race. With the regulations stating
that drivers are only allowed to use a maximum of eight engines per
season, chief operations engineer Mark Gillan confirmed that the second
failure would also disadvantage him at the Yas Marina circuit.
"We
need to ensure we have a trouble free weekend and then it is possible
that we can make it into Q3," Gillan said. "Although as Pastor will use a
ninth engine in Abu Dhabi, due to damage incurred following the gearbox
failure in India, he will therefore incur a subsequent 10-place grid
penalty."
The
improved competitiveness from Maldonado before his retirement was due
to an updated floor, which Gillan said had seen the team make progress
since Korea.
"We
made a decent step forward in performance, especially in our long run
pace, from Korea to India which was helped with a well correlated (wind
tunnel to track) floor upgrade."
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