Daniel Ricciardo will take a five-place Formula 1 grid penalty for Sunday’s British Grand Prix after Red Bull changed his car’s gearbox.
On Friday night, Red Bull informed the FIA it was changing the unit, which puts him in breach of rules that dictate gearboxes must last six consecutive events.
The only exceptions to these rules, for which a five-place grid penalty applies for a breach, are for non-starters and non-finishers (for technical reasons) of the previous race, neither of which apply to Ricciardo.
It is his second gearbox penalty of the season, after Red Bull was forced to change the unit ahead of the opening race of the season in Australia.
Ricciardo has been on an impressive run of form, scoring his fifth consecutive podium finish in Austria to leave him fourth in the drivers’ championship.
The Red Bull driver was sixth quickest in second practice on Friday, 1.090 seconds off the pace and four tenths adrift of his team-mate Max Verstappen.
Verstappen said on Friday that while he felt Red Bull’s deficit to Mercedes was not as severe as the six-tenth gap to pacesetter Valtteri Bottas suggested, he felt the team had struggled to find a suitable set-up so far.
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