Official: Verstappen handed ten-place penalty for engine change

Max Verstappen will drop ten places on the grid for the Belgian Grand Prix after Red Bull have confirmed that the Dutchman has received his fifth internal combustion engine.

Championship runaway leader Max Verstappen has been on the brink of a grid-drop penalty for excessive use of power unit elements, since he has already used all four permitted engines in the first ten races of the season.

His issues date back to the second practice session at the Canadian Grand Prix when the Dutchman encountered a problem with the electrical part of the power unit. The power unit was sent back to Honda's Japanese headquarters in Sakura, and the investigation indicated that it cannot be used again.

Red Bull have now confirmed an engine change in the Dutchman's RB20 which means that he will be handed a ten-place grid penalty for Sunday's Spa F1 round.

Ahead of the confirmation, Verstappen said: “We’ll find out on Sunday how good that is going to be, right? Some tracks naturally are a bit better than others. Of course on a street circuit, you wouldn’t want to have an engine penalty. So yeah, most likely it will be here.”

“Probably yes. If you look at our last few races where we haven’t particularly been the fastest, I wouldn’t say that with 10 places extra we have a chance of winning.

Taking an engine or gearbox-induced penalty at Spa is no stranger to Verstappen, who recovered from a five-place gearbox penalty to claim his eighth successive victory at Spa last year. Two years ago, he made light work of his grid penalties to win the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix from P14 on the grid in a Red Bull one-two.

Verstappen thinks that his RB20 might not enjoy the competitive advantage its two predecessor had weather conditions or unexpected incidents can bring him back into contention for the race win.

“But again, a race can always be turned upside down with moments. We have to be open minded and try to make the best of it. That’s what we’ll try to do. At the moment, I also don’t know how competitive we’re going to be here.

“Also a few places there’s new tarmac, so we need to see how the tyres respond to that as well. So still a lot of unknowns. Obviously with the weather, quite a bit of rain expected on Friday and Saturday.

"So yeah, just need to follow the weather and just progression through the weekend, and see how competitive we are," the Dutchman concluded.