Nico Rosberg will take a five-place grid penalty in Austria following a heavy crash in FP3 this morning.
Rosberg suffered a left rear suspension failure when he ran over the kerbs 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.
Yesterday Max Verstappen suffered a front suspension failure when he ran wide and bounced over the new ‘sausage’ kerbs, but worryingly for Mercedes Rosberg was on a normal line, and thus it was not the result of a mistake or because he had abused the kerbs.
The team said that the failure was caused by an “unusually high load at full throttle on the exit kerb of T2.”
With Sebastian Vettel already taking a five-place the rest of the field has a better chance than usual of making the first couple of rows of the grid.
