Andrea Stella wants to know whether or not Red Bull’s power unit change at the Brazilian Grand Prix will have a financial impact on their cost cap. The Milton Keynes squad bolted a new engine into Max Verstappen’s RB21 after the Dutchman was eliminated in Q1 on Saturday.
With Verstappen already starting from near the rear of the field, Red Bull took the opportunity to make set-up changes, resigning the 28-year-old to a pit-lane start. With the damage already done, a new power unit was fitted to his car for the race.
From there, Verstappen orchestrated a historic comeback drive, capitalising on early chaos and immense long-run speed to finish third, behind only Lando Norris and Kimi Antonelli. The Dutchman even picked up a puncture during his fightback, or else he would’ve likely been challenging the McLaren racer for the lead.
McLaren’s team principal wanted some further clarification on the use of a new engine. “To be honest, these kind of power unit changes, they challenge the regulations,” he said. “I will be interested in understanding if the cost of this engine now goes in the cost cap or not.
“If the engine was changed for performance reasons, it should go in the cost cap. So let’s see if this is the case, not that I will be able to see, as it’s all on the Red Bull side. But this is also one reason why we wouldn’t do it, because it would end up in the cost cap.”
Stella also questioned the performance that could be gained through an engine change. “I don’t know how this works for Honda, but in general these engines, they don’t exhibit much degradation with mileage,” he continued.
“So that’s why, in general, you wouldn’t change an engine and accept a penalty, or a loss of positions, because normally the performance you get back doesn’t really compensate for the positional losses. But, like I say, I’m not sure how the power degradation works for Honda.”
According to Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies, the marginal gains on the table through a power unit change were worth the trade-off, given Verstappen’s lowly starting grid position before the pit lane start was decided upon.
“It’s always good to fit a new engine,” he stated. “It’s fair to say that in the last part of the season, we were on schedule to finish the year without needing the change.
“We just felt that we would take the opportunity mainly because we wanted to change the car again. It’s difficult to give you a number [of seconds gained by a change], but the gaps are small enough for everything to be important.”
