Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz have also been summoned to the stewards after qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix over alleged yellow flag infringements. This comes after Verstappen was summoned for the same issue.
Verstappen qualified P2 in today’s session with a lap time of 1:21.282. However, it appears that the Dutchman kept driving through the final sector of the circuit whilst double-waved yellow flags were shown.
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly qualified fourth today, but he ended up with a puncture in his front right tyre after going over some curbs whilst going through the penultimate corner.
Verstappen improved on his first lap of Q3 by a tenth of a second, which has raised suspicion as to whether or not he eased off the throttle.
As a result, Verstappen has been summoned to the stewards for a potential infringement, but he will not be going to see them until 13:00 local time tomorrow on race day.
Valtteri Bottas, who took third on your grid, is also under investigation. This was for an incident involving singled waved yellow flags.
Carlos Sainz, who took seventh, is under investigation for the same thing.
After Verstappen at 13:00 local time, Bottas will meet with the stewards tomorrow at 13:30, and Sainz will follow at 13:45.
Speaking about this situation, Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel believes that the yellow flag was cancelled at the end of the third qualifying session “because Max was coming”.
Vettel was also affected by the flags but is “pretty happy” as he managed to out-qualify Perez, Leclerc, and Ricciardo. He has said that:
“I had the yellow flag in the last sector and then the yellow flag cleared, I guess, because Max was coming.”
Double yellow flags mean that drivers should ‘abort the lap’ as a car is on the track, which Vettel did but he believes he could have been “the only one”. The flags were there for everyone’s safety and it was clearly shown that debris came off of Gasly’s car when the puncture was obtained.
No more has been said at this time as to the outcome of this alleged infringement, so Verstappen and fans will have to wait to find out if a grid penalty will be given to the driver for Qatar Grand Prix race.
