Liam Lawson will start 10 places back from his sprint qualifying spot in Austin after Helmut Marko said he will take an engine penalty.

The New Zealander would have hoped to start by hitting the ground running but that task has now been made harder by him having to take a new power unit.

Liam Lawson to be hit with FIA grid penalty for engine allocation

Despite it being Lawson’s first laps this season, the engines are allocated to each car meaning that Daniel Ricciardo’s used power units now become Lawson’s.

“The first [race], I think, won’t be relevant because he has an engine penalty,” Marko told Motorsport-Total.com. “10 places in the sprint race, so that doesn’t exactly make life easier in Austin.”

Up to Singapore, Ricciardo was right on the limit of a penalty and the other VCARB driver, Yuki Tsunoda, has already taken an extra one out of his allocation.

Exactly half the grid has already taken some kind of penalty for new engine parts and that number is likely to increase as the season goes on.

It could also have a big impact on the title race with both McLaren drivers yet to take a penalty while Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez have already had a fifth internal combustion engine, one more than their allocation.

The situation for Lawson, whilst not being an ideal one, is at least made a little easier by it being a sprint weekend meaning Lawson’s race on Sunday should be unaffected.

But Lawson knows that time is of the essence and has these last six races to prove he deserves the seat next year as well.

“I’ve basically got to the end of the season and then I’ll find out more as the season goes on,” he told Newstalk ZB. “So at this stage, it’s the six races.

“I need to perform [to keep the seat] basically, I need to try and obviously show my worth in F1 and I would say do a similar job to what I did last year.

“That’s what’s given me the shot now, is what happened last year. So I just need to do enough to stay in the seat next year.”