Mercedes is weighing up if it needs to take Formula 1 grid penalties for engine changes over the second half of the season, which could see Kimi Antonelli hit with a drop for his home race at Monza.
The F1 world championship leader is already at the limit of his used internal combustion engines, exhaust sets, energy stores and control electronics, while he has one additional turbocharger and MGU-K units permitted within his allocation for the season.
This means if Antonelli was to take on a new set of one of the internal combustion engines, exhaust sets, energy stores or control electronics, he would automatically be given a grid penalty for the next race he participated in.
If F1 teams have the strategic flexibility, they will often opt to take the grid drops at circuits where overtaking is considered easier in order to limit the pain of the penalty. For example, Isack Hadjar took his grid drop at Spa-Francorchamps and went from 21st on the grid to sixth place at the chequered flag for Red Bull.
For the upcoming rounds, Monza is considered one of the easier tracks to overtake around – compared to the likes of Zandvoort and Baku – which means Mercedes may decide to serve Antonelli’s penalty at his home race.
“In terms of engine penalties, I still very much hope we don’t need to take it and we need to decide when that is, when we need to take one and which tracks,” Wolff said.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Michael Potts / LAT Images via Getty Images
“There could be one that can be very special for Kimi, but on paper it looks like it’s a good place to take an engine penalty, so we need to speak to Marco [Antonelli, Kimi’s father] whether we want to take an engine penalty in Monza.”
Wolff later added: “Baku is also one, maybe Baku. We take the pressure off in Monza to start from the back! It’s just our reliability has been just not good and whether we take a penalty or not, we shall see.”
Antonelli suffered an electrical failure with his power unit during the Barcelona GP, which denied him a second-place finish, with a fix for the issue arriving at the Austrian GP next time out.
But as Wolff alluded to, there is no certainty that Antonelli will need to take an engine penalty later this season given drivers can rotate between power unit components previously used. It will depend on the lifespan of these parts and will be weighed up against if Mercedes has concerns over unreliability of older units.
So far this season, Hadjar has served a back of the grid penalty for an almost entirely new power unit change, while Norris was given a 10-place grid drop for a control electronics change. Both Aston Martin drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll also served back of the grid drops for new MGU-K and electrical components – all of the aforementioned penalties were served at the Belgian GP.
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