McLaren’s Fernando Alonso is set to start Sunday’s Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix from the back of the grid as he tries out an upgraded Honda power unit in practice today.

Rules permit a driver to use no more than five complete power units and their constituent components over the course of a season.

Running the upgraded power unit will result in Alonso taking on new variants of five of the six components that comprise it, which will cost the Spaniard 30 places on the 22-car Sepang grid.

The double world champion took a similarly hefty engine-related penalty in last month’s Belgian Grand Prix at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, where he also ex-ceeded his permitted allocation of power unit parts.

“We knew these penalties would come,” said Alonso, who lost some of his allocation of power units to reliability issues this season.

“One of the best places was Spa because of the conditions of our engines at that point.

“The second best was maybe Malaysia because the weather could play a big factor in the race.”

Honda, engine suppliers to the Woking-based McLaren squad, have made steady progress after a difficult renewal of their once-dominant partnership last season.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.