Verstappen is expected to move൲ onto a fourth power unit and take a subsequent grid drop before the end of the season after losing an engi꧟ne in his 51G shunt following his collision with title rival Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone.

Red Bull opted to fit a new power unit on Sergio Perez’s car at the Dutch Grand Prix after the Mexican suffered a shock Q1 eliminaꦜtion but the team is yet to decide when it will change Verstappen’s engine.

“I mean we haven’t really decided yet where to take it,” Verstappen said on Thursday ahead of this week💖end’s Italian Grand Prix a𓃲t Monza.

“This engine is still very new so we’ll see. It’s definitely🐼 not the plan to take it here.”

V🐬erstappen reclaimed the lead of the world champion with a dominant ꦏhome victory at Zandvoort and heads into the weekend three points clear of Hamilton.

Red Bull has not won at Monza since 2013 but Verstappen hopes the team will be more competitive tꦇhis year.

“For sure compared to previous years but I’m not sure if it’s gonna be enough to fight them [Mercedes]”, Verstappen said when asked if Red Bull will have a better chance to w🉐in in Italy.

“B🐽ut nevertheless this weekend again, with sprint qual🃏ifying it is going to be very different. So I hope that we did our homework before coming here and we can be very competitive.

“But it’s a bit difficult to say where we will stand.🐓 I definitely don’t expect it to be like Zandvoort.𒀰”

And Verstappen is not exp🐻ecting F1’s sprint race format to provide huge amounts of action.

“It might seem like you have straights here but with these cars it’s exꩵtremely difficult to follow,” he added. “I remember last year, I was stuck in a DRS train, so it depends on the pace of t🧸he leading guy in the DRS train.

“But hopefully we get positively surprise𓆏d by it and maybe people will be daring with strategy, so let’s see. H⛦opefully we don’t really need to overtake many cars.”