Grid Penalties
VerifiedWhy a driver sometimes starts lower than they qualified, and how a penalty is applied to the grid.
A driver doesn't always start where they qualified. Race control can order a grid penalty, dropping a driver back a set number of places, most often for using more new power-unit components across a season than their allocation allows.
A gearbox has to last a set number of races before it can be changed without penalty; swap it early outside of exceptional circumstances and it carries a similar grid drop.
Penalties also follow driving incidents, like causing a collision or an unsafe release from the pit box. Race control applies these as a grid drop for a coming session, or, when the penalty is bigger than the grid can absorb, as a pit-lane start instead.
A pit-lane start is the harshest version: the driver starts from the pit lane, after the rest of the field, under the pit-lane speed limit, losing far more time than a grid-place drop would.