George Russell F1 grid penalty confirmed for Singapore Grand Prix
George Russell's engine penalty for the Singapore Grand Prix has been confirmed.
George Russell’s expected Formula 1 grid penalty at the Singapore Grand Prix has been officially confirmed by the FIA.
The Mercedes driver has received a power unit penalty due to exceeding his permitted allocation of components for the season after suffering a dramatic engine failure at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia last Sunday.
Mercedes had confirmed Russell would start towards the back in the build-up to the weekend and F1’s governing body has now formally announced it, with the Briton taking six fresh PU elements, including a new internal combustion engine and turbocharger.
All of these are outside of Russell's allocation and will trigger an automatic back-of-the-grid penalty.
On Thursday, Russell revealed he will need to take a further grid penalty this season in addition to the one he has been handed for the Singapore weekend.
"You get [a limit of] four engines a season, so six races on each, and we have seven races to the end. So I will be taking another penalty, so yeah it's pretty relentless at the moment,” Russell told reporters in Singapore.
"I knew I was going to have a penalty. The plan was always to go in Austin, and obviously Singapore is the second hardest track to overtake on on the calendars. So you would never choose to do it [here].
"But we have no engines because of all of the various failures, so there was no engine I could have reverted to from earlier in the season. With the failure I had to take it.
"We don't have the [upgrade] this weekend, and because there are seven races remaining, you can either choose to roll the dice and hope it lasts for seven races, but also suffer a performance offset (as the engine degrades), or just accept I'll be taking another penalty."
Russell arrives in Singapore already 84 points behind his Mercedes team-mate and runaway championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Mercedes is carrying out a back-to-back comparison test across the weekend to validate whether its latest upgrade package which debuted in Malaysia has worked.
Russell is running the older-spec W17 aerodynamic package, while Antonelli will be driving the latest version featuring the upgrade.
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