Max Verstappen has escaped a grid penalty for the Austrian Grand Prix after he was hauled in front of the Formula 1 stewards after qualifying.
The Red Bull racer set the quickest time of the session to secure pole position for Sunday's race. But that was in jeopardy when the stewards called him to see them after the session had ended.
Verstappen was accused of "unnecessarily impeding" Kevin Magnussen during the session. Both he and the Haas racer were called before the stewards to explain their sides of the story.
The hearing took place at 8pm local time in Austria (7pm in the UK). The stewards weighed up the drivers' respective arguments before arriving at a decision, which was to not penalise the Red Bull racer.
Explaining the decision in an official FIA document, the stewards wrote: "The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 1 (Max Verstappen), the driver of Car 20 (Kevin Magnussen), team representatives and reviewed positioning and marshalling system data, video, timing, telemetry, team radio and in-car video evidence.
"The driver of Car 1 stated that he saw a car approaching after he crossed the line at the end of his push lap and moved to the left of the track after the exit of Turn 1. The driver of Car 20 stated that he had to move to the right to avoid Car 1 and hence lost time on his fast lap.
"The Stewards determined from the video (and audio) evidence that Car 20 had clipped the kerb in Turn 1 and that this subsequently caused a slight change in acceleration which in turn resulted in a slightly slower time on the next mini sectors. The Stewards further determined that Car 20 did not have to take significant evasive action.
"We further note that the fact that the lap time of Car 20 was subsequently deleted [due to exceeding track limits at Turn 10] was irrelevant to this decision. Any incident is always investigated independently of other incidents or penalties."
A penalty would have been a further headache for Red Bull chief Christian Horner, who has already admitted he was annoyed after the session. But those feelings were directed at Sergio Perez who failed to reach Q3 for a fourth race weekend in a row.
This time it was because he fell victim to strict track limits rules. He had all three of his flying laps in Q2 deleted, meaning he will start 15th on Sunday and faces another huge task in his quest to score big points.
"He was matching Max's times... stay in the white lines!" said a visibly irritated Horner. "Strike one, strike two, 'Checo, just stay in the white lines'. Then strike three and he was out. So it's hugely frustrating because he could have been there and he could have done it."
