Why Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell avoided penalties in 2023 F1 Mexican GP qualifying
Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell avoided penalties in the 2023 F1 Mexican GP qualifying session.
Three-time world champion Verstappen and Mercedes driver Russell were under investigation for pit lane infringements, while Hamilton was investigated for not slowing down during the yellow flag in the session.
However, all of them escaped penalties after stewards found that seven-time world champion Hamilton had slowed down enough during the yellow flag that was shown for Fernando Alonso.
They concluded that Verstappen and Russell did not cause an "unnecessarily dangerous" situation during the pit exit and were trying to find the gap. As per The Race, the stewards explained:
"The incidents happened as a direct result of the implementation of the minimum lap time between SC2 and SC1 which is designed (correctly so, in our view) to avoid dangerous backing-up of cars on the circuit during qualification. Yet they are also required to avoid unnecessarily stopping at the pit exit or driving unnecessarily slowly,"
Max Verstappen and George Russell give their take on the pit lane investigation
Max Verstappen said that he was quite "surprised" by the stewards investigating him stopping during the pit exit, as he was just trying to make a gap.
In the post-quali press conference, Verstappen said that the other drivers were passing him in the pit lane:
"Just everyone is trying to make a gap. I saw a car passing five cars behind me. And then he tried to pass me as well, but I was just trying to make a gap out of the pitlane. And that's basically what everyone has been doing, so I'm surprised that … yeah, I'm quite surprised.
"Normally, I think, everyone should then be called up for impeding because everyone, with this new rule, is driving very slowly in the pitlane. Yeah, I don't think I did anything weird or wrong.
George Russell too echoed Verstappen's sentiments and pointed out the dangers of stopping on the track to make a gap:
"When everybody comes out of the pits at the same point, it’s difficult to take a gap. They ask us not to stop in the pitlane.
"But if you don’t make a gap in the pitlane, you have to make it on track and it’s quite dangerous if you’re doing 10km/h [6mph] down the straight when cars are doing 330km/h [205mph] on their push laps."
Both Max Verstappen and George Russell will start from their original grid slots of P1 and P8 respectively in the main race on Sunday.