Max Verstappen has lost pole position for the 2020 Qatar Grand Prix after Race Stewards handed the Red Bull Racing driver a one-place grid penalty and one penalty point for “driving unnecessarily slowly on a cool down lap” in an incident involving Mercedes’ George Russell in Q3. Russell will now take pole position for the race.

Ahead of the final flying laps of Q3, Russell came across the much slower Verstappen and had to take avoiding action to pass the Red Bull driver, as the Stewards explained in their Document 49 ruling.

“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 and 14 past,” the Stewards’ verdict read. “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.”

Explaining the penalty meted out to Verstappen, the Stewards added: “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.”