Max Verstappen stripped of Qatar GP pole as F1 stewards dish out penalty
Max Verstappen recorded the fastest time during Saturday’s final qualifying session ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix but the newly-crowned four-time world champion won’t start on pole
Max Verstappen has been stripped of pole position for the Qatar Grand Prix.
The Dutchman had topped the timesheets but was under investigation, accused of getting in the way of George Russell. And the stewards have now ruled that he was “driving unnecessarily slowly” in front of the Mercedes man.
As a result, Verstappen has been handed a one-place grid penalty. It means Russell inherits pole and will now start ahead of the Red Bull racer. Verstappen has also had one penalty point added to his racing licence.
Explaining their decision, the stewards wrote: “Car 1 [Verstappen was on a different preparation strategy to that of Car 63 [Russell]. Car 1 was well outside of the delta and the driver of Car 1 explained he had let Cars 4 [Lando Norris] and 14 [Fernando Alonso] past.
The driver of Car 63 said that he had stayed within the delta and did not think that Car 1 would be on the racing line. He said if a car was slow and in a high speed corner, it should not be right on the racing line.
The stewards consider this case to be one of their more complex ones in that it was obvious that Car 1 did not meet the Race Director’s Event Notes and, in the stewards’ view, was, for some reason, driving excessively slowly given the situation.
Strangely enough, this happened not during a push lap when only the car being tested would be in motion. It was equally clear that the driver of Car 63 had a clear view of Car 1, thus suggesting that, but for the penalty, had Car 63 been on a push lap the usual three-grid position penalty would have applied.
Prior to the penalty, Verstappen had been speaking of his delight after finding great speed in his Red Bull during the quali. Earlier in the day, he had only made little progress after dropping some many positions on the first lap of the sprint.
But after securing what he thought would be pole position the Dutchman said: “It’s a crazy turnaround. I didn’t expect that. Good work to the team for provided me with a car that is more in tune. It appears that we modified some aspects on the car yet I would not have believed that it would bring that much of a difference in performance. That is encouraging I hope that is the case as we go into the race.”
