F1 star slapped with 30-place Belgian GP penalty as two more punished | F1 | Sport

But he is not the only one set to start Sunday’s Spa-Francorchamps race much further down the grid than his qualifying position. Lance Stroll has also been given a 10-place drop, while Isack Hadjar will definitely start from the very back of the grid after triggering a whopping 30 places’ worth of penalties.

FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer has confirmed new engine components have been taken by several drivers for this weekend’s action in the Ardennes Forest. Most of them are within the rules but Hadjar has been given his fifth internal combustion engine, turbocharger and exhaust system of the year, all of which are beyond his yearly allocation.

The regulations mandate an automatic 10-place grid penalty for the first instance of each engine component going beyond the annual allotment. That means Hadjar is dropped by 10 places for each of those three new Red Bull engine bits, though the rules also say that an accumulation of 15 places or more simply means a driver will automatically start at the back of the grid.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin have decided to give Stroll a fourth Motor Generator Unit – Kinetic (MGU-K) of the year, with only three allowed per car every year. It means, like Norris, the Canadian will drop by 10 places from his qualifying position. And with Aston struggling for performance, it almost certainly guarantees Stroll a back row start with only Hadjar behind.

There may yet be more grid penalties to come later in the weekend, if other teams choose to introduce new engine components that go beyond the annual allowance. This is a popular place to do so, given overtaking is seen as being more possible at Spa-Francorchamps rather than at some of the other circuits coming up in the next few rounds.

McLaren were the first to confirm their plan to take advantage, explaining that Norris’ poor engine reliability suffered early in the season had led to this situation where incurring a grid penalty was unavoidable. “While the power electronics unit we installed in Japan, and have used in every session since Miami, has worked reliably, Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains has since introduced a series of reliability fixes to their new power electronics systems,” the team said.

“However, in order to take advantage of these improvements, we must incur a 10-place grid penalty on Lando’s car in order to take a new unit. We have chosen to do this in Belgium, a circuit where overtaking is relatively more prevalent, as opposed to the following two events in Hungary and Zandvoort. We now plan to use this fourth power electronics unit for the remainder of the season, in order to maximise reliability while minimising sporting penalties on Lando.”