Drivers are allowed to use three internal combustion engines in their cars per season, but some of them have already triggered grid penalties by exceeding the allocation in the 22-race season.
Valtteri Bottas had to accept starting positions for Mercedes in both Italy and Russia, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Turkey lost 10 positions on the grid after his own move as Mercedes was dealing with an engine problem.
Vettel has scored points in just one of the last nine races and fought his way to 18th place the last time in Turkey after a switch to slicks backfired in wet conditions.
But the Aston Martin driver is poised for yet another tricky Grand Prix at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin after announcing that the team will change their Mercedes engine.
“I think we are facing a, let’s say, difficult weekend,” said Vettel, who suffered an engine failure at FP1 in Zandvoort last month. “We change the engine and therefore get a penalty.
“We’ll see what we can do from where we start and still look ahead. I think we can be strong here. How strong? We will see.”
Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
Vettel rated the overtaking opportunities on the track as a “good place” to take the penalty and added: “Hopefully we’ll have an entertaining Sunday afternoon and get back into the game.”
Although he has resigned himself to starting in the back of the field, the four-time F1 world champion has only qualified once higher than P8 this season.
One of the challenges riders face this weekend in Austin is the bumps in the track, which caused a number of MotoGP riders to raise concerns at the recent race.
Vettel believed that bumps “add character to a track in general” and doubted that they would be as bad for the F1 cars as they were for the MotoGP bikes.
“It was pretty bad a few years ago and they sanded off the bumps,” said Vettel. “So maybe you have to deal with it in the future. But I don’t know, we’ll see what we can get out of there.
“I think a couple of weeks ago when MotoGP was here it was pretty bad. It’s not as bad for us as it is for them. But we will see. In general, I’m a fan of bumps. “
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