A despondent Stoffel Vandoorne insists he won't dwell too much on the 15-place penalty that is likely to see him start at the back of the grid for the Russian Grand Prix after suffering more Honda-related engine problems.

The Belgian, who failed to start the Bahrain Grand Prix and has been beset by the lion's share of McLaren-Honda's ongoing technical issues, came into the Sochi weekend on the cusp of a penalty after moving onto his fourth turbocharger and MGU-H ahead of the event.

Suffering a loss of power towards the end of FP1, with Honda expecting it to be related to an issue with the MGU-K, it opted to save time by swapping out the MGU-H entirely. With that and the new turbocharger taking Vandoorne out of his season allocation, he has accumulated 15 positions worth of grid penalties for the race.

“We had some engine problems again during practice one - MGU-K related - so it just meant we had to replace the engine and we're going to have a 15-place grid penalty this weekend.

“I think it was just a matter of time before we were going to have a penalty, we know the start of the season was difficult for us with quite a few reliability issues. Unfortunately it happened again today, so we just have to move on and try to make the most of the rest of the weekend.”

Evidently frustrated with more mileage-sapping problems, Vandoorne accepts a penalty was always likely but chooses to believe matters will improve

“This is the situation how it is at the moment, there's not much we can do about it and hopefully some improvements will come soon.”