Max Verstappen will start Saturday’s Singapore Sprint from pole position after stewards investigated but declined to penalize the Red Bull driver for overtaking Lewis Hamilton under yellow flags during Sprint Qualifying.
The incident occurred in the SQ1 phase when a yellow flag was displayed after Sergio Perez’s Cadillac struck the barriers. Verstappen, on a push lap, passed Hamilton’s Ferrari prior to Turn 8 while both cars remained in the yellow flag sector. Hamilton immediately reported the pass over team radio, saying, “Max overtook me under yellow flags.” Verstappen responded by offering to surrender the position, saying, “I’ll let Lewis by again. I think I passed him before the yellow, but I just want to be safe.”
The stewards confirmed in their decision document that Verstappen had breached yellow flag regulations, but determined the circumstances did not warrant a penalty. Telemetry showed Verstappen lifted fully off throttle within approximately 40 metres of entering the yellow flag sector. Hamilton, meanwhile, had braked and reduced his speed to less than 60 km/h at the point of the overtake. The speed differential between the two cars at the moment of the pass was approximately 70 km/h less than Verstappen’s speed on another push lap in the same session.
“The stewards were satisfied that the driver of Car 3 reacted appropriately to the yellow flag by lifting off throttle and reducing speed,” the decision document read. “The stewards determined that the driver of Car 3 breached the yellow flag regulation by overtaking Car 44. However, the stewards were satisfied that the overtake was an unfortunate consequence of the significant closing speed differential and, in these circumstances, determined not to impose a penalty.”
Verstappen also argued that braking heavily enough to avoid the pass would have created an unsafe situation, a claim the stewards acknowledged in their findings.
Speaking before the verdict was issued, Verstappen reflected on a qualifying session that delivered Red Bull’s first Sprint pole of the Singapore weekend. “For sure, once we bolted on the soft tyres in SQ3, it felt like the car was coming alive a little bit more, but I did not expect this,” he said. “Of course, very happy to be first.”
Verstappen, who claimed Red Bull’s first race victory of the season at Sepang, struck a measured tone about the RB22’s performance around the Marina Bay Street Circuit. “I think in the last few races we’ve been a lot stronger. This track still highlights a few little weaknesses in the car, but we managed to drive with them as well as possible.”