Four races into the 2015 season and Daniel Ricciardo has already used three of his four allowed engines, meaning penalties for exceeding his allocation will likely happen sooner rather than later.
The Red Bull driver will use a fourth power unit at the Spanish Grand Prix in three weeks time after his latest unit blew up just before he crossed the finish line in bahrain.
“It failed 200 metres before the line, but thankfully we had enough momentum to coast over the line,” said team principal Christian Horner.
“That’s three out of four now for Daniel now. He’ll be on engine four in Barcelona.”
However the Australian will receive some respite with the addition of a fifth engine under new rules set to be rubber stamped, though that will only postpone eventual penalties.
“We unanimously agreed on it [the fifth engine] in Malaysia, all of the teams,” added Horner.
“Bernie [Ecclestone] said it only has to formally go through the Strategy Group and the F1 Commission to be signed off and that can be done by fax vote.”
Meanwhile, Renault are pushing ahead with fixes for their reliability troubles which they hope can be implemented at the next race in Spain.
