Vandoorne’s motivation not affected by Spa grid penalties

Stoffel Vandoorne says his motivation for his first home Formula 1 race in Belgium this weekend is not affected by his power unit grid penalties that are near-certain to resign him to a final row start at Spa on Sunday.

Vandoorne’s first half-season in F1 as a full-time driver has been hindered by a number of issues with Honda’s power unit, which has failed to offer either reliability or performance to the McLaren team.

Vandoorne made a breakthrough in Hungary before the summer break, scoring his first point of the year, and arrived in Belgium for his first home grand prix hopeful of a repeat.

However, the odds will be stacked against him from the very start, with 65 places worth of grid drops set to leave Vandoorne starting at the back of the field.

“It doesn’t affect my motivation. It’s maybe a shame it happens in Spa but it is the way it is,” Vandoorne said.

“The penalties are inevitable considering all of the failures we had at the beginning of the season. It was always going to be like this.

“So we need to think about the future and hopefully it helps in other grands prix.”

Vandoorne got his first taste of Spa as a McLaren F1 driver on Friday in practice, and was pleased with how the MCL32 car performed.

“The feeling was quite positive as usual. The car handling felt quite good,” Vandoorne said.

“From my position this weekend we know are starting last, so we were having a bit of a different run programme on Friday, concentrating more on the high fuel runs, setting up the car for the race.

“That’s where our main focus is for this weekend so hopefully, maybe with a bit of weather we can still have a good result.”