Nico Rosberg to take five-place grid penalty after crash in practice
Nico Rosberg will take a five-place grid penalty in Austria following a heavy crash in FP3 Saturday morning.
Rosberg suffered a left rear suspension failure when he ran over the curbs at Turn 2. The car turned sharp left into the barrier, striking with the front and then the rear. The latter impact led to the decision to change the gearbox.
On Friday, Max Verstappen suffered a front suspension failure when he ran wide and bounced over the new “sausage” curbs but, worryingly for Mercedes, Rosberg was on a normal line, and thus it as not the result of a mistake or because he had abused the curbs.
The team said that the failure was caused by an “unusually high load at full throttle on the exit curb of T2.”
With Sebastian Vettel already taking a five-place penalty, the rest of the field has a better chance than usual of making the first couple of rows of the grid.
