Max Verstappen has been demoted from third to fourth in the final standings of Saturday’s Sprint event after the Red Bull driver was hit with a five-second penalty for breaching the Virtual Safety Car rules.
The FIA stewards deemed that Verstappen had transgressed the regulations by driving too fast under the VSC conditions in the closing stages of the race.
Under the VSC regime, drivers must respect the latter’s delta time, which mandates they stay above a minimum lap and sector time when the VSC is active.
Drivers have a real-time delta displayed on their steering wheel to help them maintain a legal pace under VSC.
When a driver falls below this limit before green-flag racing resumes, it constitutes a breach of regulations, as it gives them an advantage.
The stewards determined that Verstappen fell short of the minimum VSC time by 0.63 seconds just as the VSC ended. This allowed the Dutchman to position himself closer to Oscar Piastri’s McLaren in a late attempt to secure second place on the final lap.
The stewards cited Article 56.5, which requires drivers to maintain the minimum delta until the VSC ends.
“The driver was 0.63 seconds below the minimum time at VSC end when the FIA light panels changed to green. This indicates a sporting advantage gained under VSC,” the stewards stated.
Verstappen acknowledged that he saw the warning about his delta time and attempted to correct it, but was unable to recover the lost time before the VSC ended.
The stewards therefore imposed the standard five-second penalty for the infraction, which ultimately relegated Verstappen behind Charles Leclerc to fourth place in the sprint’s final classification.
©RedBull
In addition to the time penalty, Verstappen received one penalty point on his super license, raising his total to seven. Though he’s still below the 12-point threshold that results in an automatic race ban, two of his points will expire before the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
With this outcome, Norris narrows his deficit to Verstappen to 44 points in the Drivers’ championship, with four races and one sprint event remaining on the calendar.
Reflecting on his run to third ahead of his demotion, Verstappen felt that his overall pace in the Sprint was promising.
“I think we had good pace,” Verstappen said. “Just I got stuck in at the DRS train. So I had to wait for my moment to have a go at Charles.
“He [Charles Leclerc] had a few moments in the race and then he made a mistake in Turn 1. So then I had a good run out of Turn 3 and I could get him.
“But unfortunately a bit too late. But there was also not much else that I could do because when everyone is just in a DRS train, you can’t attack. That was it.
“But the pace is good. It seemed like we could at least be in that fight which hasn’t really been the case the last few races, so I think that’s promising.”
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