Verstappen set for five-place grid drop in Brazil

On top of his Mexico GP penalties and lagging car pace, championship leader Max Verstappen’s troubles are about to get even worse.

It is now almost certain that the Red Bull driver will need to move down the grid at the Brazilian GP this weekend due to needing a fresh power unit.

Verstappen, whose lead points lead over Lando Norris shrunk from 57 to 47 points on Sunday, suffered engine trouble in both practice sessions in Mexico.

The team had to change that engine and replace it with another from his official allocation. "The engine we put in it was no longer suitable for racing," revealed Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko.

"We were so slow on the straights. So we will take an extra engine," he told ORF. "This will most likely happen in Brazil."

The engine change will result in a 5-grid drop for Verstappen, but Marko thinks trying to avoid the penalty would affect the 27-year-old’s chances even more.

"The older an engine gets, the more the performance decreases," he said.

"A grid penalty of five places is not so severe in Brazil, because you can overtake relatively easily there. But we saw in Mexico that we were about 3-8kph short on the straights. We can no longer afford another race like that.

"Everything started to go wrong with the engine problems in practice," Marko continued. "We could hardly practice at all - not with the medium tyre, not with the hard tyre. But even if the race on Sunday had gone normally, we still wouldn’t have been able to match the speed of the Ferrari and the McLaren.

"The times Norris did at the end were unbelievable."

Marko therefore admits that Verstappen is not a genuine contender for victory at Interlagos this weekend. "Qatar is the most likely when it comes to the chances of winning," said the Austrian.

"Brazil is a lot of slow corners, which is one of our weaknesses."