Comment 6 for bug 995144

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a grub boot partition in the msdos partition table, and adding one would cause more problems that it would solve given the fragility of the msdos partition table. Using the unpartitioned space after the MBR is the best grub can do on msdos partitioned disks, and intended behavior, not a bug. Also there is nothing particular about the first track that makes it any more or less safe to use than any other unpartitioned space on the disk. It is simply a matter of convention that msdos left this space unpartitioned, and boot loaders decided to make use of it.

Normally the grub core image can fit within 62 sectors, depending on what modules are built into it. It appears that recently when both lvm and raid modules are built in, it no longer quite fits in 62 sectors. Fortunately, the convention has shifted in recent years to not start the first partition until sector 2048.