Italian GP: Pastor Maldonado sure he can recover from grid penalties

The Venezuelan was slapped with a brace of five-place grid penalties after the Belgian Grand Prix, one for jumping the start and one for hitting Timo Glock at the first corner after the safety car came in.

But Maldonado believes that the characteristics of the Monza circuit will allow him to recover ground despite the scale of the challenge he faces.

"It's difficult," said Maldonado. "I'm not happy with that, but there's nothing I can do but race.

"Fortunately, this track is quite quick and we can recover in the straights. We're looking to have a good top speed and a different approach for this race.

"We'll try to do the best we can in qualifying and recover during the race. It's one of the tracks where you can overtake more easily than the others."

Maldonado blamed the clutch level slipping out of his hand for the jump start at Spa. He said the collision with Glock was due to a mistake on cold tyres after a safety-car pitstop rather than a botched pass.

"The clutch lever slid out of my hand and that's why I started before the lights went off," he said.

"After I missed it, I decided to go as far as possible and then to take the penalty.

"At the restart, I locked the fronts when I was far away from Timo and not trying to do anything against him.

"He was starting to turn in and I touched him in the rear right. There was nothing I could do. I tried to go up the inside, but he was turning at the same time."