Perez looked to have broken the track rules on that final lap as well, though, and this was discovered after the session, leading to a stewards' probe.
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After his initial time was eliminated for exceeding track restrictions at the Red Bull Ring, Sergio Perez advanced to the final qualifying session of the Austrian GP with his fastest Q2 lap. Perez looked to have broken the track rules on that final lap as well, though, and this was discovered after the session, leading to a stewards’ probe. Red Bull’s Perez qualified in fourth place, however he would drop to fifth after it was discovered that he had broken track limitations on his Q2 lap, which led to the deletion of all of his Q3 results. The stewards acknowledged that because there were numerous instances to look at in each session, it wasn’t discovered until just before the start of Q3, indicating that he participated in Q3.
It was also acknowledged that it does not occur frequently, and certainly not recently, for a driver to advance through a qualifying round only to later be discovered to have violated track regulations, necessitating an investigation as a novel circumstance. “The team made the point that they took both risk and expended resources to compete in Q3,” the FIA bulletin reads. “The stewards accept this point. However, in assessing a penalty after a session, this is no different than any other situation.”
“The usual penalty is deleting the lap time concerned, and the stewards order the same penalty here. However, as a consequence, the driver would not have proceeded into Q3 and therefore, in fairness to all the other competitors, the stewards order that all the lap times for Q3 for the driver also are deleted.”
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In a thrilling qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring on Friday evening that saw both Mercedes drivers crash out, Max Verstappen won pole position ahead of the Sprint. After morning rain and a soggy build-up to the Austrian Grand Prix, the drivers were greeted by sunny skies. Qualifying set the grid for Saturday’s Sprint, which in turn set the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Given that Lewis Hamilton finished third in the previous session, Mercedes may have entered Q3 looking for pole, but the seven-time champion crashed into the barriers at Turn 7 and brought out a red flag in the middle of the top-10 shootout, dropping him to a provisional 10th place.
Minutes later, George Russell (P5), a teammate, followed suit with a spin and crash at the last turn, closing off an awful afternoon for the Silver Arrows. Verstappen raised the literal roof off the Red Bull Ring with his final flying effort, leaving Leclerc second by barely 0.029s and Carlos Sainz third by 0.082s during the second stoppage of Q3.
