Stoffel Vandoorne says his motivation for his first home Formula 1 race in Belgium thi🐭s 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 with Honda’s power unit, which has failed to 🌊offer either reliability or performance to the McLaren team.

Vandoorne made a breakthrough 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 worth of grid drops set to leave Vandoorne start🎉ing at the back of the field.

“It doesn’t❀ affect my motivation. It’s maybe a shame it happens in Spa but it is the way it is,” Vandoorne said.

“The penalties are inevitable considering all of the failures we had at the begin﷽ning of the season. It was always 💎going to be like this.

“So we need 🍸to think about the future and hopefully it helps in other gran🐬ds prix.”

Vandoorne got his first taste of Spa as a McLaren F1 driver on Friday in practice, and wa꧃s 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 weekend we know are starting last, s🍰o we were having a bit of a different run programme on Friday, concentrating more on the high fuel runs, setting up the car for the race.

“That’s where our main fo💦cus is for this weekend so hopefully, maybe with a bit of weather we can still have a good result.”