04/10/2014
NEWS STORY
Jean-Eric Vergne has been handed a ten-place grid penalty after falling foul of the new power unit component rules.
For the Frenchman, who has had the weekend from hell, this will be yet another bitter pill.
Having had to hand over his car to Max Verstappen, the driver who will replace him next season, for yesterday's opening session, Vergne missed valuable track-time due to an engine failure at the end of the session. He then lost further track-time as a result of two technical issues in FP2.
This morning he awoke to learn that although Sebastian Vettel is leaving Red Bull, once again it is a Toro Rosso teammate who will step into the void created with Daniil Kvyat replacing the German in much the same way as Daniel Ricciardo got the nod to replace Mark Webber.
The Frenchman's weekend subsequently got that little bit worse when he was handed a ten-place grid penalty when the team opted to change his Internal Combustion Engine thereby taking him over the 5 unit limit, a breach of Article 28.4 a of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations.
Vergne, who qualified 11th will therefore start from 20th, since Pastor Maldonado had already been handed a ten-place drop for a similar 'offence'.
Check out our Qualifying gallery, here.