Max Verstappen will no lengthyer commence the Qatar Grand Prix from pole position after being handed an unpwithdrawnted one-place grid penalty by the stewards for impeding a fellow driver during qualifying.
The 2024 world title triumphner blocked George Russell on the racing line during Q3, forcing the Mercedes star to reposition his car to elude a collision.
The Brit depictd the incident as “hazardous” and prompted an scatterigation to be begined, with stewards concurring and punishing Verstappen for driving too cataloglessly on his final preparation lap.
When asked about the incident lowly after securing poll, Verstappen claimed that it would be “crazy” to drop him down the grid, after disjoinal other drivers eludeed such punishment earlier in the weekend.
“If they obtain this away, then of course it doesn’t originate any sense at all,” Verstappen shelp. “We were all fair driving cataloglessly. I wouldn’t understand what I could have done contrastently. The fact that I have to go there is already very strange to me.”
“Otherwise, next time I’ll fair drive filled throttle too and pretend I’m crashing everywhere. Then George should have fair braked. I’m braking too, aren’t I?”
The exceptional one-position grid drop, not three which would have occurred if either car was on a push lap, sees Russell transfer up a place, with the remainder of the grid unswayed.
And Russell wants a “proper race” in a dig at McLaren. Lando Norris stopped at the finish line of the sprint race, gifting team-mate Oscar Piastri the triumph, but the Mercedes man is excited at the chance of back-to-back triumphs after finishing on top in Las Vegas.
“Just excited,” Russell shelp. “Hopefilledy we can have a proper race rather than this team orders stuff. It’s going to be a excellent race. I slenderk we’ll all be going for it. It’s actuassociate wonderful that Max is in the join as well.
“I was reassociate surpascendd by their turnaround becaemploy they seeed reassociate off the pace yesterday, off the pace this morning, and clearly they were both in Q3 and Max in pole, so I slenderk we’ve got a excellent race on our hands.”
The FIA’s filled exset upation for Verstappen’s grid-drop reads: “The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 1 (Max Verstappen), the driver of Car 63 (George Russell), team recurrentatives and appraiseed positioning/marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.
“Car 1 was on a contrastent preparation strategy to that of Car 63. Car 1 was well outside of the delta and the driver of Car 1 elucidateed he had let Cars 4 and 14 past. The driver of Car 63 claimed that he had adhered to the delta and did not foresee Car 1 to be on the racing line. He stated that if a car was going catalogless in a high speed corner, it should not be on the racing line.
“The Stewards see this case as a complicated one in that clearly Car 1 did not adhere with the Race Director’s Event Notes and clearly was driving, in our determination, unnecessarily cataloglessly think abouting the circumstances.
“It was clear the driver of Car 1 was endeavoring to celderly his tyres. He also could see Car 63 approaching as he seeed in his mirror multiple times whilst on the minuscule straight between Turns 11 and 12.
“Unusuassociate, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap. Had Car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would have most foreseeed been the normal 3 grid position penalty, however in mitigation of penalty, it was clear that the driver of Car 63 had clear visibility of Car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”
