No penalty for Verstappen after 'ignoring yellow flag' in FP3

Max Verstappen fears an additional grid penalty. During the third free practice, the Red Bull Racing driver is said to have ignored a yellow flag. In other words, he would not have taken his foot off the gas. Race direction will now investigate the incident.

In the past, stewards have often given a grid penalty of three places for ignoring yellow flags. Verstappen has not yet been called up by the stewards to give an explanation, but it may be decided later.

Horner addresses Verstappen

On Verstappen's fast lap, it appeared that it was an Alfa Romeo driver driving particularly slowly through sector three. On the TV images it was not good to see and probably from the cockpit of Verstappen also not. Indeed, the Dutchman missed that a yellow flag was hanging. Team boss Christian Horner had to draw his attention to it over the board radio: "You just drove through yellow flags." Verstappen: "Those weren't there." Horner responded wittily while thinking back to last year: "No, they weren't there in Qatar either." Hopefully for the Dutchman, his team's warning was still in time and he will not be penalized by the race committee.

Update 14:28 | No penalty for Verstappen

Although Verstappen was already on edge after a test start during Friday's practice that did not go entirely smoothly, race control waived further measures against the Dutchman for the incident in FP3. So Verstappen will not receive a penalty for the yellow flag situation and thus seems to have braked in time to avoid it after all.