McLaren-Honda had hoped to avoid penalties for this weekend’s race at Austin, as the outfit feels the US GP represents its best chance of a strong result in the remaining races.

But because of high mileage on Vandoorne’s ICE, Honda has elected to change the unit, which will be his eighth of the season, triggering a five-place penalty.

Honda has been pushing on with development and Motorsport.com understands the internal combustion engine has small modifications to improve performance.

The Japanese manufacturer has decided not to change any of the other components to minimise the penalty for the Belgian.

Vandoorne will have the new unit from first practice on Friday at Austin, with teammate Fernando Alonso running the same engine he used at the last race at Japan.