Red Bull says the Belgian Grand Prix was the best “opportunity” for Max Verstappen to take a fresh power unit.
The reigning world champion is one of six drivers, including nearest championship rival Charles Leclerc, laden with grid penalties at Spa as a result of new PU components.
In Verstappen’s case, he has a fourth ICE, turbocharger, MGU-H and MGU-K in his RB18, and Red Bull boss Christian Horner isn’t surprised to see so many teams pick this weekend to add to their allocations.
“We felt it was particularly tight to get to the end of the year with the engine allocation that we have,” he told Sky Sports.
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“You then look at the circuits coming up, Zandvoort you don’t want to take it there. Monza is actually harder to overtake than you think. Singapore you don’t want to take it, Japan’s tricky to overtake so you start running out of options.
“[Spa] is a good track to overtake and we feel we should be quick here, so hence we’ve decided to take the opportunity.
“Here and Bahrain are probably two of the easiest circuits on the calendar to actually make an overtake.
“That’s why probably so many people have nominated this circuit to take that penalty to try and get engines in the pool for the rest of the year.”
With Leclerc also joining Verstappen in starting towards the back, Horner expects “two races” in one on Sunday.
“You’re going to see potentially those guys battling it out at the front and we’ll be seeing how quickly can Max and Charles make their way through the pack,” he suggested.
“It’s going to make it two races, which are going to be fascinating.”
In Practice, Verstappen finished behind the two Ferraris in FP1 before smoking the field by 0.8s in FP2.
“As soon as we went out, the car was working pretty well, so that’s a positive,” Max summarised.
“There’s always little things that you want to fine-tune with the balance, but basically from the first run, I was happy with the car.
“Obviously I would have liked to run a little bit more, [as would] everyone else, but so far it’s been a good start.”
In Hungary, the 24-year-old won from 10th, the lowest grid position he has been victorious from in his F1 career so far.
And as for the prospect of trying to do so again from even further back at Spa, he replied: “That’s what we’ll try. We have to!”