Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel takes 10-place engine penalty for Ferrari update

Sebastian Vettel will take a ten-place grid penalty as a result of a Ferrari engine upgrade at the United States Grand Prix.

Ferrari still had four power unit tokens to use this season and has continued development of its engine with an update in Austin. With Vettel taking a new specification of power unit he is automatically hit with a penalty, confirming on Thursday he will drop ten places but expects "a big step" forward.

“We will have the hit of ten places on the grid for the new engine, but it has always been the plan," Vettel said. "It is not a big secret, it is not a surprise to us. To explain, this was the plan to have the strongest engine available at every single point in the season and I think the engine guys have done a massive job.

“This shouldn’t be understood as a downside, if anything this is a positive sign because we have been pushing hard and the guys managed to make big steps in terms of performance.”

With Vettel still in with a mathematical chance of winning the drivers' championship - which Lewis Hamilton can win in Austin - he says Ferrari is thinking of the bigger picture with the penalty.

"If you look at this race isolated, it is not great news but you have to look at the whole project and season. It was always the plan to have a fresh engine here and the priority was to have maximum power at every race. We have to take the hit here but we should see the positives that we were able to make big steps."

Vettel's Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen is also expected to take the same penalty this weekend.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.