Max Verstappen loses pole position as Qatar Grand Prix grid changed | F1 | Sport
Max Verstappen will no longer start the Qatar Grand Prix from pole position after being handed an unprecedented one-place grid penalty by the stewards for impeding a fellow driver during qualifying.
The 2024 world title winner blocked George Russell on the racing line during Q3, forcing the Mercedes star to reposition his car to avoid a collision.
The Brit described the incident as “dangerous” and prompted an investigation to be launched, with stewards concurring and punishing Verstappen for driving too slowly on his final preparation lap.
When asked about the incident shortly after securing poll, Verstappen claimed that it would be “crazy” to drop him down the grid, after several other drivers avoided such punishment earlier in the weekend.
“If they take this away, then of course it doesn’t make any sense at all,” Verstappen said. “We were all just driving slowly. I wouldn’t know what I could have done differently. The fact that I have to go there is already very strange to me.”
“Otherwise, next time I’ll just drive full throttle too and pretend I’m crashing everywhere. Then George should have just braked. I’m braking too, aren’t I?”
The rare one-position grid drop, not three which would have occurred if either car was on a push lap, sees Russell move up a place, with the remainder of the grid unaffected.
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 victory, but the Mercedes man is excited at the chance of back-to-back wins after finishing on top in Las Vegas.
“Just excited,” Russell said. “Hopefully we can have a proper race rather than this team orders stuff. It’s going to be a good race. I think we’ll all be going for it. It’s actually great that Max is in the mix as well.
“I was really surprised by their turnaround because they looked really off the pace yesterday, off the pace this morning, and obviously they were both in Q3 and Max in pole, so I think we’ve got a good race on our hands.”
The FIA’s full explanation 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 representatives and reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.
“Car 1 was on a different preparation strategy to that of Car 63. Car 1 was well outside of the delta and the driver of Car 1 explained he had let Cars 4 and 14 past. The driver of Car 63 claimed that he had adhered to the delta and did not expect Car 1 to be on the racing line. He stated that if a car was going slow in a high speed corner, it should not be on the racing line.
“The Stewards regard this case as a complicated one in that clearly Car 1 did not comply with the Race Director’s Event Notes and clearly was driving, in our determination, unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances.
“It was obvious the driver of Car 1 was attempting to cool his tyres. He also could see Car 63 approaching as he looked in his mirror multiple times whilst on the small straight between Turns 11 and 12.
“Unusually, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap. Had Car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would have most likely been the usual 3 grid position penalty, however in mitigation of penalty, it was obvious that the driver of Car 63 had clear visibility of Car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”
