Red Bull responds to possible penalty for Verstappen after Hamilton incident

Max Verstappen impressively secured pole position for the sprint race in Singapore on Friday, but he still has to wait and see whether he will actually be allowed to start from the front. The stewards are investigating an incident during sprint qualifying in which Verstappen passed Hamilton under yellow flags.

Hamilton complained about it over the team radio. Verstappen, in turn, said that he had already given the position back. Nevertheless, Red Bull must explain itself to the stewards.

However, team principal Mekies believes Red Bull has strong arguments to avoid a penalty. The Frenchman is particularly pointing to the speed at which Hamilton was driving at the moment in question following Sergio Perez's crash: "Honestly, I have not seen the replay yet, but what I saw live is that Lewis was effectively in a cool down lap, so he was travelling like at 50 kph or something," he told F1TV.

Mekies stressed that, in his view, Verstappen had hardly any alternative but to do what he did: "I think realistically, it could not have been in a position to react fast enough to stop behind Lewis. Let alone, sadly, safe."

Above all, Mekies was pleased with Verstappen's pole position for the sprint race. While several rivals opted for two fast laps in SQ3, Verstappen wanted to settle for a single attempt: "Honestly, it was Vax. He was very, very decided on that. We experimented a bit with the medium tires in SQ1, in SQ2. In SQ1, we did a build up. In SQ2, we didn't. And ultimately, he was very clear after that that for the soft tire, which he has not run today because we didn't run it in FP1, but he was very clear he wanted a single lap, and that's what he did."

The decision worked out perfectly: "We were convinced that for us it was the best way around the lap, and yeah, it's good when it's confirmed," Mekies concluded.