Kimi Antonelli has been handed a 3-place grid penalty not slowing sufficiently under single yellow flags during today's qualifying session.

The Mercedes driver told the stewards that on seeing the yellow flag and light panel, he lifted off the throttle earlier than his previous push lap. This was verified by the telemetry.

However, the reduction in speed occurred for a very short period, and in fact the car's speed when passing the scene of the incident involving Max Verstappen, was slightly higher than that on the previous push lap.

The mini sector time was only 0.03 second slower than his best time for that mini sector, and whilst, because he had lifted 16 metres earlier, he was 14 km/h slower entering the yellow flag sector, but was 3 km/h faster when passing the incident site due to less application of the brakes entering the corner.

The stewards noted that the speed reduction in the mini sector was less than 1% and considered this incident to be different to other incidents that have resulted in no further action, because unlike those cases, there was no significant speed delta through the mini sector compared to the driver's previous fastest time under similar circumstances.

The recommended penalty according to the penalty guidelines, for this offence, is a drop of 5 grid positions, however in mitigation of penalty, the stewards considered that the teenager did make a reduction in speed, albeit, in their determination, an insufficient and unsustained one. Further, the Mercedes driver had limited time and distance to react. Hence a lower penalty was applied.

In a separate incident, the Mercedes driver was also alleged to have driven unnecessarily slowly, whereby was on an in-lap his time between SC2 and SC1 exceeded the prescribed maximum for this event.

The Mercedes was not overtaken by any other car.

Antonelli acknowledged that he had exceeded the delta. He said he was pre-occupied by his push lap having being affected by a yellow flag and wasn't focusing sufficiently on adhering to the delta. His team explained that they were dealing with an issue with George Russell and ought to have reminded Antonelli to speed up.

The stewards determined that Antonelli drove unnecessarily slowly by not adhering to the delta but noted that no other car was affected. Consistent with previous infringements of this type where no other car is affected, the stewards imposed a warning.

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