Max Verstappen has been slapped with a five-second time penalty following Lando Norris’ victory in the sprint race at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in Brazil.
In an enthralling race, there was a four-way battle for the lead between the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Norris, Red Bull’s Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Onboard footage showed the championship leader virtually alongside Piastri as they prepared for the restart on the final lap and he was later summoned to the stewards.
They concluded that he had jumped the gun at the restart and had driven quicker than the minimum time required when the VSC is active.
Explaining the ruling, a statement from the FIA, F1’s governing body, read: ‘Article 56.5 states in part “All cars must be above this minimum time when the FIA light panels change to green.” 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 driver explained that as he was awaiting VSC to end and he got the notification that he was below the minimum time, he attempted to correct the error but failed to do so by the point that the panels turned green.
‘This is a breach and the standard penalty is applied for the advantage gained
at that time. The net effect of this put the driver ahead of where he was at the start of the VSC and not as a result of the car in front falling back.’
A five second time penalty drops Verstappen down to fourth, with Leclerc moving up to third.
It’s hardly the most devastating penalty in the world, but nevertheless it means that Norris has cut the gap in the championship to 44 points ahead of Sunday’s race at Interlagos which gets underway at 5pm UK time.
Despite finishing behind his rivals, Verstappen took confidence from the sprint race, saying: ‘It was promising, it was good. This is race pace.
‘Tomorrow it might rain as well, so there are a lot of unknowns, but today was good. I still expect them [McLaren] to be really quick over one lap but I hope we can limit the damage a bit with the five-place grid penalty I have.
