Antonelli suffers same fate as Hamilton as FIA issue verdict

The championship leader, like Lewis Hamilton, will also serve a three-place grid penalty for Sunday's race. As a result, the Italian will drop to seventh on the grid, promoting his teammate one place.

According to the FIA, telemetry confirmed that Antonelli did lift off the throttle after seeing the yellow flags, but the reduction in speed was both too brief and too small to satisfy the regulations.

Although he entered the yellow-flag zone at a lower speed than on his previous lap, he carried more speed through the incident itself due to braking less into the corner, resulting in a mini-sector time just 0.03 seconds slower than his benchmark. The stewards concluded that, unlike previous cases that resulted in no further action, there was no significant reduction in pace through the affected mini-sector.

While the standard penalty for the offence is a five-place grid drop, they reduced it to three places after taking into account Antonelli's limited time to react and the fact that he did make an attempt to slow down, even if it was deemed insufficient. Below is the explanation in full.

Hamilton and Antonelli's penalties trigger a significant reshuffle at the front of the grid. Having originally qualified second and fourth respectively, both drivers drop three places, promoting Charles Leclerc onto the front row alongside polesitter Lando Norris.

Max Verstappen benefits by climbing to fourth and will line up alongside Oscar Piastri on the second row, while George Russell also gains a place. Behind them, the rest of the order simply moves up, with Isack Hadjar, Arvid Lindblad and Nico Hulkenberg rounding out the top 10.