Horner addresses Red Bull grid penalty concerns

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has provided an update on Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez's power unit situation ahead of the final 10 rounds of the season.

Both of the Milton Keynes-based squad's drivers have already extended their pool of available Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) to five, one more than permitted by the F1 regulations.

First, Perez suffered the accompanying grid drop at the British Grand Prix. After qualifying only P19, the reigning constructors' champions opted to take advantage of the reduced impact and start him from the pit lane.

More recently, Red Bull pre-emptively introduced an extra ICE to Verstappen's allocation at Spa-Francorchamps, where the team judged the damage to results to be relatively minimal. This followed the approach the team took at the previous two Belgian GPs.

Meanwhile, rival teams are yet to extend their pools and therefore could face equivalent penalties. Although, out of the top four teams, only Charles Leclerc has broken the seal on a fourth and final allowed part for one of the four main power unit components.

Furthermore, both Verstappen and Perez, are at the threshold for the Turbo Charger (TC) and the heat and kinetic motor generator units (MGU-H and MGU-K), whilst Mercedes and McLaren have only introduced three of each.

With only four permitted per season, neither the Dutchman nor his team-mate can introduce another of those parts without suffering further grid penalties. However, despite this, Horner believes his drivers are in an "okay" position.

"It depends on what happens to the pool," the 50-year-old joked to media including RacingNews365 when asked about the power unit situation for the rest of the year, before confirming: "We think we're okay at the moment."

View the overview of used power unit parts per F1 driver below. Number of allowed components before a penalty in brackets ().