Max Verstappen will no longer start the Qatar Grand Prix from pole position after being handed an unprecedented one-place penalty by the stewards for impeding a co-driver during qualifying.

The winner of the 2024 world title blocked George Russell on the racing line during Q3which forces the Mercedes star to relocate his car to avoid a collision.

The Britten described the incident as “dangerous” and led to an investigation, with stewards agreeing and penalizing Verstappen for driving too slowly on his final preparation lap.

Asked about the incident shortly after securing the vote, Verstappen claimed it would be “crazy” to drop him on the grid, after several other drivers avoided such a penalty earlier in the weekend.

“If they take this away, of course it makes no sense at all,” Verstappen said. “We were all just driving slowly. I wouldn’t know what I could have done differently. The fact that I have to go there is already very strange to me.”

“Otherwise, next time I’ll just go full throttle too and pretend I’m crashing all over the place. Then George should have just braked. I brake too, don’t I?”

The rare grid drop of one position, not three which would have occurred if either car was on a push lap, sees Russell move up one place, with the rest of the grid unaffected.

And Russell wants a “real race” in a dig at McLaren. Lando Norris stopped at the finish line in the sprint race, giving teammate Oscar Piastri the win, but Mercedes one is excited about the chance to win back-to-back after finishing on top in Las Vegas.

“Just excited,” Russell said. “Hopefully we can have a proper race rather than this team ordering things. It’s going to be a good race. I think we’re all going to go for it. It’s actually good that Max is in the mix as well.

“I was really surprised by their turnaround because they looked really bad yesterday, from the pace this morning, and obviously they were both in Q3 and Max was on pole, so I think we’ve got a good race on our hands.”

The FIA’s full explanation for Verstappen’s grid-drop reads: “Stewards heard from the driver of Car 1 (Max Verstappen), the driver of Car 63 (George Russell), team representatives and reviewed positioning/ranking system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.

“Car 1 was on a different preparation strategy than that of car 63. Car 1 was well outside the delta and the driver of car 1 stated that he had passed cars 4 and 14. The driver of car 63 claimed that he had kept to the delta and expected do not assume that car 1 would be on the racing line.

“Stewards regard this case as a complex matter as Car 1 clearly did not comply with the race director’s event notes and was clearly driving, in our determination, unduly slow in the circumstances.

“It was obvious that the driver of car 1 was trying to cool his tires. He could also see car 63 approaching when he looked in his 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 standard 3 grid position penalty, but in mitigation it was clear that the driver of car 63 had clear sight of car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”