Revealed: How Pierre Gasly received the biggest grid penalty in almost a decade

Pierre Gasly has been given a 50-place grid penalty as a result of changing his engine, making it one of the biggest punishments in F1 history.

A driver is given a certain allocation of parts to last them throughout the season and should they need to exceed that, grid penalties will follow as is the case for Gasly.

Pierre Gasly handed 50-place grid penalty for Silverstone

Gasly arrived at Silverstone with his fifth Internal Combustion Engine, Turbo Charger, MGU-H, MGU-K and third Control Electronics all of which exceeded his season’s allocation.

As a result, he was given 10 spots for every offending element, handing him a total of 50 and ensuring he would start last before a wheel had even spun.

But Gasly is not the first one in F1 history to have received an enormous penalty.

Back in 2015, McLaren were handed a combined total of 105 places for the Belgian Grand Prix due to both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso receiving new engines.

Both drivers had a number of changes to their misfiring Honda engines with Button given 50 places and Alonso 55. The drivers would end the race in 13th and 14th respectively.

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Button himself boasts the biggest penalty in F1 history having received 70 spots for the Mexican Grand Prix that same season.

Gasly qualified last in the end at the 2024 British Grand Prix but hoped potential wet weather could see him rise up the order in the race.

He said: “The conditions are quite mixed and lap time improving, not a lottery in these conditions but you can make a big jump every single lap and the team pulled me out of qualifying just to make sure we maximised the qualifying on the other on the other side [Esteban Ocon].

“We’ll have to review what we did, because I don’t think we gave ourselves the best chances on the other side.

“It didn’t really matter where I qualified, but obviously would have been nicer to be out there and still give it a try. But we know we can start tomorrow and hopefully we can get these conditions where we know more opportunities come up whenever the rain comes along.”

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