TECHNICAL: Russell, Norris and Piastri receive fresh engine as fourteen drivers set to use new ICE at Silverstone
A total of fourteen drivers will use a fresh internal combustion engine at today's British Grand Prix, including pole-sitter George Russell and the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. F1Technical's lead journalist Balázs Szabó reports on power unit usage from Silverstone.
Power units
For the 11th year running, the 2024 F1 cars are powered by V6 hybrid turbo power units with 1.6-litre engines. This season represents the penultimate year the current engine configuration appears before being replaced by a new power unit formula in 2026.
Current F1 power units feature seven elements: the internal combustion engine (ICE), motor generator unit-heat (MGU-H), motor generator unit-kinetic (MGU-K), turbocharger, energy store (ES), control electronics (CE) and exhaust.
Over the course of the 2024 season, a driver may use no more than four ICEs, MGU-Hs, MGU-Ks and turbochargers, two energy stores and control electronics, and eight of each of the four elements that make up a set of exhaust systems (comprising primaries left-hand side, primaries right-hand side, secondary LHS and secondary RHS).
With the British Grand Prix marking the midpoint of the 24-race 2024 F1 season, many teams felt that it was the right time to install new power units into their cars.
A total of 14 drivers will race today with a new ICE: George Russell, Sergio Perez, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly, Logan Sargeant, Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda, Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg.
While the change sees the majority of drivers race with their third ICE, Perez, Ricciardo and Tsunoda have started to use their last unit of their allocation for the 2024 F1 season.
Perez, Russell, Piastri, Norris, Stroll, Alonso, Gasly, Sargeant, Ricciardo, Tsunoda, Bottas, Zhou, Magnussen and Hulkenberg have also received a new turbocharger, MGU-K and MGU-H for the Silverstone round.
The cars of Verstappen, Perez, Piastri, Norris, Stroll, Alonso, Gasly, Sargeant, Ricciardo, Tsunoda, Bottas, Magnussen and Hulkenberg have been equipped with a new exhaust system.
Although every change took place within the allocation of the aforementioned drivers, Alpine's Gasly exceeded his allocation of control electronics. With the change triggering a ten-place penalty, Alpine elected to equip Gasly's A524 with further new parts to boost his pool of components for the rest of the season.
The changes meant that Gasly breached his allocation of the internal combustion engine, turbocharger, MGU-H, MGU-K and control electronics for the race at Silverstone, picking up a 10-place penalty for each case, a 50-place penalty in total.
Gearbox units
Drivers are also limited in terms of how many restricted-number components (RNCs) they can use during a season. RNCs are components that make up the gearbox, split between the gearbox case and cassette, and the gearbox driveline, gear change components and auxiliary components.
As with their power units, drivers have a ‘pool’ of four gearboxes that can be swapped around during the season. Only when a driver exceeds their allocation of either of the above gearbox components do they receive a grid penalty.
Albon and Hulkenberg have received a fresh gearbox. With Albon having already added three gearboxes to his pool, he only has a single new unit for the rest of the season while Hulkenberg still has two new gearboxes to use in the remaining 12 races.
