Red Bull expects minimum 10-place Ricciardo grid drop in Canada

Daniel Ricciardo will take grid penalties at this weekend’s Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix, Red Bull’s Adrian Newey has revealed. 

Ricciardo suffered an MGU-K failure in last month’s Monaco Grand Prix but was still able to fend off Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to win the race. He was already forced to take a brand new power unit in China, following reliability failures in Bahrain and Shanghai, and moving onto a third MGU-K will incur an automatic 10-place grid drop in Montreal. 

The Australian could face further penalties should he need to change onto a third set of energy store and control electronics components, though he would not receive any additional grid drops for taking on a third V6, turbo or MGU-H as drivers need to move onto their fourth allocation before penalties are applied.

“He will definitely be taking some penalties in Montreal, we haven’t heard at the moment just how many,” Red Bull chief technical officer Newey told Reuters.

“One of things there is whether the battery was damaged or not in Monaco, so until we know that from Renault we don’t know exactly what we’re facing. The MGU-K is definitely a penalty.”

Some media reports following the Monaco Grand Prix suggested Renault had discovered Ricciardo’s damaged MGU-K was salvageable, meaning he would avoid taking a penalty, however Newey confirmed that was not the case. 

“I rather doubt it, considering it caught fire and was a burnt out, charred wreck,” he explained. “I would be somewhat surprised at that one.”

Red Bull is currently undergoing talks with Japanese engine manufacturer Honda as it evaluates whether to stick or twist with current power unit supplier Renault heading into 2019, following a frustrating period playing catch-up to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari in terms of performance and reliability during the V6 hybrid era. 

Renault is set to introduce a major upgrade package at this weekend’s race in Canada, though it remains to be seen whether Red Bull will opt to take on the updates or not despite it being made available to all six cars powered by the French manufacturer.