Palmer to take gearbox grid penalty

As expected, Jolyon Palmer is set to drop five places on the grid for Sunday’s 2017 Formula 1 Pirelli Belgian Grand Prix after Renault changed the gearbox on his car ahead of the race.

Palmer qualified tenth, having failed to set a Q3 time after his transmission failed at the start of Saturday’s top-ten shootout. The Briton is now expected to start 15th thanks to a five-place penalty for the unscheduled gearbox replacement.

Five other drivers have already had grid penalties applied: 65 places for McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne after a new gearbox and multiple power unit element changes; five places for Williams’ Felipe Massa for ignoring yellow flags in FP3; five apiece for Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Pascal Wehrlein due to unscheduled gearbox changes; and 20 for Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat for using several new power unit elements.

The provisional grid now looks like this: Hamilton, Vettel; Bottas, Raikkonen; Verstappen, Ricciardo; Hulkenberg, Perez; Ocon, Alonso; Grosjean, Magnussen; Sainz, Palmer; Stroll, Massa; Ericsson, Wehrlein; Kvyat, Vandoorne.