Gearbox change means grid penalty for Vettel

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

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The FIA has confirmed Sebastian Vettel has changed his gearbox, meaning he will take a penalty on the grid for Sunday’s race.

Vettel last changed his gearbox at the Russian Grand Prix, round four of the championship, where he received a five-place grid penalty. As his new gearbox also failed to complete the required six consecutive events, Vettel will therefore receive the same penalty again.

Vettel said he is unsure how competitive Ferrari will be this weekend after a disrupted, rain-hit second practice session which he spun at the end of.

“It was a decent day,” he said. “It is not entirely clear where we stand, as we didn’t have a lot of running due to the weather, in particular in the afternoon, but in general the car feels good.”

“When I spun at the end of the second session, I had an issue with brake distribution. It caught me by surprise, but it didn’t matter too much, as I only lost a couple of minutes, and in the end it didn’t make a lot of a difference.”

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    9 comments on “Gearbox change means grid penalty for Vettel”

    1. First post. Inspired by grid penalties arising from mechanical issues. These grid penalties adversely affect competition between the drivers and in this 2016 season may be a deciding factor in the driver’s championship. This is unfair as the mechanical issue will normally be a team / engineering fault, not a driver error. Whilst the penalty may put a driver out of position which may “enhance” the show, this is artificial and any overtaking will be due to a disproportionate car advantage. It’s far better to have a driver start from a grid position which is reflective of the drivers pace, and which will make the race fairer. How about “penalties” which punish the team for poor car reliability, not the driver? Would it not be fairer to have constructor championship points deducted?

      1. Constructor point deduction is a good one. I’ve been trying to think of other ways as well.

        My idea is a “complex” one which people might not like, but I hope it has some merit.

        If a driver/team replaces a gearbox/engine beyond the prescribed limits, that team pays a large financial penalty (I don’t know what would suit, €1m?) which goes in to a pool for the end of the season.

        At the end of the season all the funds in that pool gets divided equally by the teams who did not take any penalties (and those who did receive their share pro-rata.) It would be complicated to divide the funds out at the end of the season (which the fans don’t need to know about anyway) but I think the mere thought of a team putting money in to the other teams pockets would be enough to dissuade any extraneous hardware usage/changes (and help the teams who can’t even afford to change their hardware if they wanted to anyway)

        1. The reason they don’t dock points is because it would have a larger impact on the smaller teams than it would he top ones.

          Mercedes for example could get a 50 point penalty & it wouldn’t affect them at all while the same penalty applied to Toro Rosso would drop them from 6th to last in the constructors standings which could cost them a massive amount of prize money at the end of the season.
          Its a similar story with why there isn’t a financial penalty, The big teams could easily afford it while the smaller teams simply couldn’t.

          The grid penalty system is as it is because it was seen as the fairest way of doing it. They wanted it to be enough of a disincentive for the larger teams while at the same time not putting the smaller one’s who were/are already struggling financially under any further pressure because lets not forget the whole purpose of the restrictions was to reduce cost’s to help the smaller, less financially secure teams who couldn’t afford to throw a new engine in the car after every session as the big teams used to.

      2. Every time someone starts talking how mechanical failures should only punish team, a part of me dies. It dies because it mourns the humanity and its inability to think one step further from their initial thought, before they speak up.

        Arguing people who are unable to figure out for themselves, why you can’t separate the team from the driver, is masochism for two reasons:
        1. It’s been debated over and over and everything was already said.
        2. If they can’t figure it out for themselves, you can’t help them.

    2. I was gonna be sad… But then, it is a Mercedes track, who are we kidding.

      It will be a marvelous achievement to get a podium for Vettel.

    3. Ferrari should focus on running Vettel longer in the first stint. Considering how he struggled to get that Williams last year, it will be best if they can do their own program and get the gap before pitting. That way, they don’t have to be stuck behind another slower car.

      Hope they learned a lesson from 2015.

    4. It will be a carnage fest for Vettel this weekend :( Trying to survive the start from 8th-10th with a faster car must be hard.

    5. That’s another race Ferrari won’t win.

    6. Is this maybe the unique chance of the year for Kimi to put it on pole, with both Rosberg and Vettel having a 5 grid position penalty for the start? That is of course if Hamilton is not finding his root cause for lack of pace in last FP sessions, as everybody would probably consider the pole for him would be a given without Rosberg or Vettel to challenge?

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