Max Verstappen was stripped of his pole position at the Qatar Grand Prix after he was penalized one place on the grid following an incident in the final part of qualifying on Saturday.

The stewards’ decision means Mercedes driver George Russell will start from pole position for the second race weekend in a row, while Verstappen will finish second.

Verstappen was penalized for “driving unnecessarily slowly”, a breach of Article 33.4 of the sporting regulations, as he prepared for his pole position lap.

By driving slowly on the racing line, he forced Russell to take evasive action as the Mercedes driver was also preparing for his final Q3 attempt.

Russell came across the slow-moving Red Bull at Turn 12 and dipped a wheel into one of the gravel strips as he adjusted his line to move past Verstappen on the outside, who was on the racing line.

In order to prevent large differences in speed between the cars in qualifying, the race director sets a maximum lap time delta for each event that the drivers must adhere to and which Verstappen had exceeded.

Neither driver was on their actual qualifying lap, but Russell drove much faster than Verstappen to prepare his tires for his fast lap, while the Red Bull driver tried to cool his tires before his run.

“Car 1 (Verstappen) followed a different preparation strategy than car 63 (Russell),” the stewards said in a statement. “Car 1 was well outside the delta and the driver of car 1 stated he had let cars 4 (Lando Norris) and 14 (Fernando Alonso) pass.

“The driver of car 63 claimed that he was sticking to the delta and did not expect car 1 to be on the racing line. He explained that a car traveling slowly in a corner at high speed should not be on the racing line.” .

“The stewards view this case as complicated,” the statement continued, “since car 1 clearly did not adhere to the race director’s event instructions and, in our opinion, obviously drove unnecessarily slowly given the circumstances.”

“It was obvious that the driver of Car 1 was trying to cool his tires. He could also see car 63 coming towards him as he looked in the mirror several times on the small straight between turns 11 and 12.”

“Unusually, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap. Had car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would most likely have been the usual penalty of three places on the grid from car 63 having a clear view of car 1 and that neither car was on a fast lap.

After the session, Russell suspected the incident may have cost him his chance of pole position.

“I ended up going through the gravel, all over the ground, through the ground,” he said after the session. “It felt like the ground was dragging over the curb and through the gravel.

“So I hope it didn’t do any harm. Maybe that’s why we didn’t improve (in the last round). I don’t know it.”

“But it was a little hairy two corners before we started the lap.”