Prior to the 13th round of F1 Hungary GP, Red Bull gave Max Verstappen the fourth “gearbox case and cassette (GBX C & C)” and “drive parts, gear change, auxiliary parts (GBX DL)” this season. unboxing. You have reached your annual limit.
With 23 races or less in a year, the limit is four, meaning Verstappen will face a five-place grid penalty if he opens a new gearbox component once more in the future.
Along with Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) also opened the third engine.
Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu’s “GBX C & C” have reached four units each, and Mick Schumacher’s (Haas) components have reached four units each.
As with the power unit, it is desirable to replace the excess on a course that is basically easy to overtake when digesting the penalty.
Unless the teams below the top three, including Mercedes, raise their competitiveness to a level where they can compete for the championship, the 5 grid is not fatal for Red Bull RB18, and it will be possible to minimize the damage.
Also, if a complete replacement of the power unit or a violation of parc fermé regulations causes the car to start at the end of the race or start from the pit lane, doing so at the same time will effectively cancel out the demotion.
How the gearbox change penalty works
Regarding the gearbox exchange, until last year it was compulsory to use it for 6 consecutive races, and if it violated it, it was a mechanism that would be demoted, but the regulation was revised in 2022.
As a result, the gearbox is subdivided into two types of components, similar to the power unit regulations that separate components such as ICE (internal combustion engine) and MGU-H, and an upper limit of 4 units per year is set for each. was done.
The number of grids to be relegated is the same as last year, and each violation (every time you open a component that exceeds the prescribed upper limit) will result in a penalty of 5 grid demotions.
