Max Verstappen put himself in the best spot for a Sprint victory at the Singapore Grand Prix after sealing pole in Sprint Qualifying.<\/p>\n
However, the Dutchman initially faced some uncertainty over his position due to a potential yellow flag infringement during SQ1, an incident that was only investigated once the session was over.<\/p>\n
Following the stewards\u2019 hearing, it was confirmed that Verstappen<\/a> would not receive a penalty<\/a> \u2013 and we\u2019ve rounded up the details on why that was the case.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/p>\n Single yellow flags were waved in SQ1 due to Cadillac<\/a>\u2019s Sergio Perez<\/a> hitting the barriers, and Verstappen subsequently appeared to have overtaken the Ferrari<\/a> of Lewis Hamilton<\/a> \u2013 prompting Hamilton to report over the radio: \u201cMax overtook me under yellow flags.\u201d<\/p>\n Verstappen then commented: \u201cI\u2019ll let Lewis by again. I think I passed him before the yellow, but I just want to be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n A document released following the stewards\u2019 hearing into the incident explains: \u201cAs Car 3 [Verstappen] was exiting Turn 7 on a push lap, a single yellow flag was displayed. Car 44 [Hamilton] was ahead of Car 3 and had been warned of Car 3\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThe driver of Car 44 said that after exiting Turn 7, he slowed and moved to the right to ensure he was off the racing line. Car 3 overtook Car 44 prior to Turn 8 while both cars were still in the yellow flag sector. Car 3 then abandoned the push lap.<\/p>\n \u201cThe driver of Car 3 explained that he was on throttle exiting Turn 7 and then saw the yellow flag and lifted. This was confirmed by telemetry. Within approximately 40 metres of entering the yellow flag sector, the driver of Car 3 had lifted fully off throttle. The driver of Car 44 was braking and had reduced speed to less than 60km\/h at the point Car 3 overtook.\u201d<\/p>\n Why didn\u2019t Verstappen receive a penalty?<\/p>\n The stewards felt that Verstappen had \u201creacted appropriately to the yellow flag\u201d and acknowledged that, while he had breached the regulation, this was \u201can unfortunate consequence of the significant closing speed differential\u201d.<\/p>\n As the document states: \u201cBecause Car 3 was on a push lap and was on throttle out of Turn 7 and Car 44 had slowed, the speed differential at the point of the overlap was significant despite the fact that the driver of Car 3 had also started braking.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stewards were satisfied that the driver of Car 3 reacted appropriately to the yellow flag by lifting off throttle and reducing speed. The speed of Car 3 at the overtake point was some 70km\/h less than Car 3\u2019s speed on another push lap in the same session.<\/p>\n \u201cThe driver of Car 3 explained that to have avoided the overtake would have required him to have braked very heavily and he considered to have done so would have potentially created an unsafe situation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stewards determined that the driver of Car 3 breached the yellow flag regulation by overtaking Car 44. However, the stewards were satisfied that the overtake was an unfortunate consequence of the significant closing speed differential and, in these circumstances, determined not to impose a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n This means that Verstappen retains his pole for Saturday\u2019s Sprint at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, where he will line up ahead of Mercedes<\/a>\u2019 George Russell<\/a> and Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen put himself in the best spot for a Sprint victory at the Singapore Grand Prix after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-926892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}