This means that if Ferrari decides to equip Alonso's car with a new powerplant, the move would lead to a 10-place grid penalty for the race in question. To make things worse for the Scuderia, it seems that the Italian team is the only one in the paddock to have used all engines for both drivers so far, as their main title rivals have at least one spare engine for the remainder of the 2010 campaign.
McLaren-Mercedes has one spare engine for each of its two drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, as is the case of Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel. Mark Webber, on the other hand, is the best placed driver in the engine allocation top, having 2 spare Renault engines to use in the remaining 5 rounds of the season.
“The McLaren drivers (are a threat) because they look to have a bit more reliability up their sleeve with engines, and we don't know what's going to go on at the end of the year,” Webber said in an interview with BBC Sport, hinting that his engine advantage is not as big as it seems, as compared to his main title rival Lewis Hamilton.
Mercedes, Force India, Toro Rosso, HRT, Virgin and Lotus have all used only 7 engines for each of their drivers so far, the same as Williams F1's Nico Hulkenberg and BMW Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi. Additionally, only 3 more drivers have 2 spare engines for the remainder of the season, namely Williams' Rubens Barrichello and Renault's duo Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov.
Aside from the two Ferrari drivers, BMW Sauber's Pedro de la Rosa ran out of engines during the Belgian Grand Prix, and was handed a 10-place grid penalty for using an extra engine. Since he's no longer an active F1 driver, Nick Heidfeld, his replacement for the rest of 2010, will suffer the same consequence if he's forced to use an additional Ferrari unit until the last race of the season.
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