Max Verstappen has been hit by a five-place grid penalty for the Brazil Grand Prix.
Red Bull put a new engine in his car ahead of the race in Sao Paulo and left the garage early in practice on Friday.
The Dutch driver will hope to see results in Friday’s sprint qualifying ahead of the sprint race on Saturday.
It is the third penalty in two races for Verstappen after two 10-second penalties in Mexico due to separate incidents with title rival Lando Norris.
Those setbacks saw Verstappen, who leads the Formula 1 drivers’ standings, finish sixth.
Those weren’t the only issues for the Dutch-Belgian, either. Verstappen was forced to change engines ahead of Saturday’s final practice, and although he avoided a penalty by using an engine within his existing set of power units, he has not delayed the penalty for long.
Verstappen, 27, complained about the performance of his replacement engine on Sunday.
Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko suggested this is a likely move, too. He told ORF: “The engine we had in there [for the Mexican GP] was no longer intended for the race.
“The older an engine gets, the more its performance diminishes [...] We saw that we were missing 3-8kph on the straights.
“The penalty would be five places. That wouldn’t be so severe in Brazil, for example, where you can overtake relatively easily.”
Verstappen, who has won the last three F1 drivers’ titles, served an engine penalty at the Belgian GP in July, dropping 10 places on the grid. However, he recovered from an 11th-place start to finish fourth.
Verstappen leads McLaren’s Norris by 47 points with four races left this year. Norris finished second in Mexico, picking up 18 points compared to Verstappen’s eight for coming sixth. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz took home the race win.
