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Lawson hit with COTA grid penalty for PU violation
Liam Lawson will take a grid penalty at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix as a result of RB exceeding the limit of power unit components.
The New Zealander is making his first start of the season at COTA, but since he is replacing Daniel Ricciardo he also takes over Ricciardo’s car in terms of power unit components. That meant a complete new power unit that is being introduced at Circuit of the Americas takes him above the limits and will force him to start Sunday’s race from the back of the grid.
Lawson has exceeded the maximum-allowed components in all six areas of the power unit – internal combustion engine, turbocharger, MGU-H, MGU-K, energy store and control electronics – and each component carries a 10-place grid penalty. As per the regulations, anything more than a 15 cumulative grid position penalty means a driver must start behind any other classified driver.
Although it’s a Sprint event, the penalty applies to Sunday’s grand prix, to prevent teams targeting Sprints to lessen the impact of a significant drop.
Lawson ended the only practice session on Friday in 13th place on the classification, a little over 0.1s slower than teammate Yuki Tsunoda.
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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