Alonso faces time penalties as well as grid drop

By Alan Baldwin SPIELBERG, Austria (Reuters) - McLaren's Fernando Alonso faces a time penalty in Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix as well as starting from the back of the grid as a result of exceeding his engine allocation for the season. The governing FIA said on Friday that the Spaniard would start with a new engine, his fifth in eight races, as well as his fifth turbocharger and fifth MGU-H (motor generator unit-heat) component. The extra engine carries a 10 place penalty while the other items bring five place penalties -- totalling a grid drop of 20 places. Depending on where he qualifies on Saturday, and with only 20 grid slots, any untaken places after the drop will be converted into time penalties. Alonso, a double Formula One world champion who joined McLaren from Ferrari at the end of last season, has yet to score a point in seven races with the team who have started a new partnership with Honda. He has remained optimistic despite the setbacks, however. "In terms of performance, we expect a lot from the car in the next month or two months," he said on Thursday. "So we will see how we end up before summer and how we end up at the end of the year. That will give us some hopes for next year, let's say. It's the way it is. "I see the resources, I see the talent of the team, so it's a question of time when we will be competitive. Hopefully we will make it very short, that period of learning that we are having at the moment, but I'm optimistic," he 6added. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Sudipto Ganguly)