Danger escaped for Max Verstappen. The Red Bull world champion, in fact, kept the pole he won at Suzuka after being called up by the commissioners for what happened with Lando Norris in the initial phase of Q3.
Verstappen, in the very first minutes of the session, was warming up the tires of his RB18 and had Lando Norris behind him, but far away.
Arriving out of the 130R corner, Max pounded hard on the gas to bring the rear tires up to temperature, but the still cold tires took him by surprise and he was forced to a sudden counter-steering to regain control of the car.
Just then Lando Norris decided to overtake the Dutchman’s Red Bull on the outer side of the track, but the McLaren driver was forced to throw himself on the grass to avoid crashing into Verstappen’s car.
The risk was huge, and Max soon after apologized to Norris for the episode while Lando was pretty tough when he spoke to the press at the end of the session.
The commissioners summoned Verstappen to hear the explanations of the world champion as well as review the videos and decided not to penalize the Dutchman on the grid but to punish him with a reprimand as has already happened in the past for other similar cases.
“The stewards listened to the driver of car 1 (Max Verstappen), the driver of car 4 (Lando Norris) and the team representatives”, reads the press release issued by the Federation.
“The driver of car 1 was aware that car 55 was in front and car 4 was approaching from behind and decided to accelerate just as car 4 decided to overtake him. Unfortunately, due to the lack of tire temperature in car 1, the driver temporarily lost control of the car ”.
“The driver of car number 4 said it was a simple unfortunate accident, but it is the driver’s responsibility to always keep control of his car.”
“As far as the sanction is concerned, all previous infringements of this nature have resulted in a warning so in this case a similar sanction is imposed”.
#Verstappen #retains #pole #reprimand