SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium -- Fernando Alonso will start the Belgian Grand Prix behind Lewis Hamilton at the back of the grid after a qualifying engine failure forced Honda into another engine change.
Alonso stopped on track having failed to complete a lap in Q1, his second failure of the weekend with Honda's upgraded power unit. His first came after a water leak on the MGU-H in FP1, which led to a new engine and grid penalty ahead of second practice, before an anomaly was detected on Saturday morning in FP3. Despite that anomaly, Honda felt Alonso would be fine to compete in qualifying -- something F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa admits was a mistake.
"This morning we saw some low oil pressure, so we had to stop the session," Hasegawa said. "We checked the data, and we adjusted the oil pressure. We thought we could do that, and take a risk to join qualifying. Actually my judgement was a mistake and it was not good, so we have to change the engine for tomorrow."
Despite the succession of power unit failures with its upgrade, which Honda spent seven development tokens on, Hasegawa does not think there is a deeper problem with the manufacturer's new power unit.
"So far we believe it is a coincidence and not related to the new-specification update engine. But we have to be mindful that we have not had enough time to check the engine."
Alonso will now get another penalty ahead of the grand prix, which comes on top of the 35-place penalty he had already incurred with the initial change. If Honda changes all six components he will be left with a 70-place grid penalty -- five more than Lewis Hamilton has accumulated this weekend after several changes by Mercedes. However, Alonso was already due to start from the back of the grid after he failed to set a time in Q1 and was reliant on the stewards giving him permission to race, which the duly did on Saturday evening.