Max Verstappen penalized by five places on the starting grid, Pierre Gasly will start 2nd

Max Verstappen’s turn. A week after seeing his rival Lewis Hamilton being pushed back to the back of the grid in Brazil, the Dutchman was penalized with five penalty places this Sunday after ignoring a double yellow flag during qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix. The leader of the World Cup will therefore start from 7th row, just behind Valtteri Bottas, also penalized by three places. Direct consequence: the French Pierre Gasly inherits the first row alongside the poleman, Lewis Hamilton.

On Saturday, it was also the accident of the French driver which had led to the appearance of the yellow flags in the last sector, at the very end of the qualifying session. Despite this, Verstappen did not “significantly slowed down“, as the regulations require, and had even improved his own time. After a (very) long deliberation, started this Sunday morning a few hours before the start of the Grand Prix, the marshals still took into account extenuating circumstances – Verstappen did not benefit from all the signals – to make their decision.

In his misfortune, the Dutchman will therefore set off from the gummed part of the track, the most favorable at the start. Quite the opposite of Valtteri Bottas: the Finn goes from 3rd to 6th place and will therefore have to defend in front of the World Cup leader when the lights go out. On a circuit a priori not very conducive to overtaking, the Batavian driver will have to achieve a feat in order to try to limit losses. Three races away from the lowering of the curtain, he is only 14 points ahead of the seven-time world champion.