It has only taken two races of the new season for McLaren to get on the wrong side of Formula One officials — and Fernando Alonso — again.
The team — kicked out of last year’s constructors’ championship and heavily fined for their part in a spying scandal — were back in trouble on Saturday, penalised for their drivers causing interference during qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton qualified third and fourth respectively, but both received penalties of five grid places that meant they would start at eighth and ninth in Sunday’s race.
It was a significant blow for McLaren, who had already seen Ferrari claim first and second on the grid during Saturday’s qualifying session, displaying speed that the British team accepted they could not match.
The penalties came after BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld and Renault’s Alonso were baulked by slow-moving McLaren cars in the closing seconds of Saturday’s qualifying.
Heidfeld claimed that having to weave past the McLarens — who had completed their series of quick laps and were cruising back to the pits — cost him third place, and he eventually qualified in seventh.
Alonso acknowledged that he was unlikely to do much better than the ninth place in which he did eventually qualify, regardless of the interference.
Still, his part in Saturday’s drama would revive the ill-feeling between the two-time world champion and McLaren, where he spent one unhappy season in 2007, upset at the treatment he got relative to rising star Hamilton.
The five drivers who originally qualified behind the McLarens — Toyota’s Jarno Trulli, BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica and Heidfeld, and Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Alonso — will each move up two grid slots for Sunday’s race.
While they were small beneficiaries of the McLaren penalty, the big winners were title rivals Ferrari, who would have five slower cars between themselves and Kovalainen and Hamilton at the race start.
Saturday’s events produced a remarkable turnaround in fortunes between the two teams.
At the close of Friday’s practice — in which Hamilton set the fastest time — Ferrari were facing the gloomy prospect of losing yet more ground to McLaren in the title race.
Last week’s season opener in Australia — where both Ferrari cars failed to finish — left the Italian team already 13 points behind McLaren in the constructors’ championship, and race winner Hamilton had seized the initiative in the drivers’ championship.
But Saturday’s events meant Ferrari had a genuine prospect of immediately catching up with Hamilton and McLaren in both. — Sapa-AP