» Red Bull drivers get engine penalties

Both Red Bull Racing drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat will serve 10-place grid penalties at the team’s home Grand Prix in Austria this weekend, the FIA has confirmed.

Both drivers have exceeded their four allocated engine elements for the season – in just the eighth round of the 2015 campaign – as the team and engine partner Renault continue to struggle for performance and reliability.

Under Article 28.4 of the 2015 FIA Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, each driver is allocated four power units – comprising six elements: the engine (ICE), the motor generator unit-kinetic (MGU-K), the motor generator unit-heat (MGU-H), the energy store (ES), turbocharger (TC) and control electronics (CE).

In the first instance that a fifth individual element is used, a ten-place grid penalty will be automatically applied under Clause (c) of the Article, with further five-place penalties for each instance that any other element is allocated for a fifth time. The penalty system is repeated for the sixth use of an element, and so on.

Should both Ricciardo and Kvyat qualify inside the top-ten on the grid, they will be able to take their penalty in full. Should either, or both, fail to qualify in the top-ten- meaning the full grid penalty cannot be taken – the balance of the penalty will be served in the form of a time penalty during the race, which is applied in a sliding scale as follows:

If between 1 and 5 grid places are untaken, a five-second time penalty will be served at the driver’s first pit stop
If between 6 and 10 grid places are untaken, a ten-second time penalty will be served at the driver’s first pit stop

Kvyat and Ricciardo were sixth- and seventh-fastest respectively in the opening practice session at the Red Bull Ring.