Grosjean and Palmer penalized after qualifying

Romain Grosjean and Jolyon Palmer are due to start on the back row at the Chinese Grand Prix after both drivers were penalized after qualifying.

Antonio Giovinazzi crashed at the end of Q1, losing control exiting the final corner and hitting the barrier before coming to rest in the middle of the track. Both Grosjean and Palmer were in the drop zone at the time and completed their laps, but the double waved yellow flags meant neither was able to improve sufficiently to make it through to the second part of qualifying.

With both drivers still setting personal best lap times despite the stricken Sauber, they were summoned to the stewards and the FIA handed out five-place grid penalties to each of them for ignoring yellow flags.

The punishments were handed out because "the driver attempted to set a meaningful lap time after passing through a double waved yellow marshalling sector, contrary to the requirements set out in the Race Director's Event Notes," while the stewards "also took into consideration that the driver made no attempt to significantly reduce his speed in the area of a double waved yellow flag."

Such penalties were made more likely following an incident at the Hungarian Grand Prix last year, where Nico Rosberg took pole position despite passing through a double waved yellow marshaling sector on his fastest lap. Since then, the FIA essentially expects drivers to abort their laps if passing through such a zone on track.

Grosjean was particularly vocal in his anger at the penalty, with the Frenchman later tweeting data to show he slowed for the double waved yellow flag and lost a second of lap time. Speaking before the decision, the Haas driver said he only completed his lap because he was unaware of the severity of the incident.

"I backed off before the corner, I took the corner slowly and I backed off after the corner," Grosjean said. "I didn't got to pit because my engineer told me it was a single yellow flag initially, so single yellow could be just a spin and then going again – I didn't know it was a crash... I lost one second, I was fully backed off before the corner and after the corner and the car was on a straight line and I went by on the right."

As a result of the penalties, Palmer drops to 20th and last on the grid while Grosjean will line up one place ahead of him in 19th. The grid is subject to further change as Giovinazzi is expected to need a new gearbox following his crash, which will result in an automatic grid penalty.

Both Palmer and Grosjean were also handed three penalty points for their infringements, with the Briton now on seven penalty points for the 12-month period. If a driver reaches 12 penalty points in that time, they will receive an automatic one-race ban.