Power Unit Allocation

Each driver is allotted a fixed number of power unit components for the season: a set number of internal combustion engines, MGU-Ks, turbochargers, energy stores, and control electronics. Exactly how many varies by component and can change between seasons as the regulations are updated.

Using more than the allocated number of any component before the season's races are up triggers a grid penalty (see grid penalties), scaled roughly to how far over the limit a team goes. Teams track this budget across the whole season, not race by race.

This turns reliability into a strategic resource, not just a technical one: a team might deliberately take a known penalty at a circuit where overtaking is easier, to fit a fresh, more reliable component in before a harder-to-pass track later in the season.