Austin, 18th November

We’ve decided to accept the penalty normally associated with the gearbox change on Felipe’s car which means that he’ll get a 5 place grid penalty. The reason for this was for strategy considerations, with the objective of maximizing Alonso’s start potential given that he’s still in with a chance to win the Drivers’ championship. We saw yesterday that starting from the dirty side of the track would have been penalizing: there was a significant risk of finding ourselves too far behind the leaders at the end of the first lap. It was a decision agreed by both drivers. We’ve always maintained that the interests of the team come before that of the individual drivers and this has always been our very transparent policy. Felipe has fully comprehended the reasons behind this decision and so he’s once again proven his total dedication to the team - something for which we would publicly like to express our gratitude.