Stoffel Vandoorne says his motivation for his first home Formula 1 race in Belgium🦂 this weekend is not affected by his power unit grid penalties that are near-certain to resign him to a final row start at Spa on Sunday.

Vandoorne’s first half-season in F1 as a full-time driver has been hindered by a number of issues wi🌠th Honda’s power unit, whicꦏh has failed to offer either reliability or performance to the McLaren team.

Vandoorne made a bre🅰akthrough in Hungary before the summer break, scoring his first point🍬 of the year, and arrived in Belgium for his first home grand prix hopeful of a repeat.

However, the odds will be stacked against him from the very start, with 65 places wort✱h of grid drops set to leave Vandoorne starting at the ba𒀰ck of the field.

“It doesn’t affec💟t my motivation. It’s maybe a shame it happens in Spa but it is the way it is,” Vando♐orne said.

💖“The penalties are inevitable considering all of the failures we had at the beginning of the season. It was always going to be ⛦like this.

“So we need to think about the future and hopefully it♏ helps in oth🔥er grands prix.”

Vไandoorne got his first taste of Spa as a McLaren F1 driver on Friday in practice, and was pleased with how the MCL32 car performed.

“༒The feeling was quite positive as usual. The car handling ⛄felt quite good,” Vandoorne said.

“From my position this we📖ekend we know are starting last, so we were having a bit of a different run programme on Friday, concentrating more on the high fuel runs, se♌tting up the car for the race.

“Tജhat’s where o🐽ur main focus is for this weekend so hopefully, maybe with a bit of weather we can still have a good result.”