Overview
- The qualifying session on Saturday ended with Max Verstappen crashing at Turn 9 and marshals showing single-waved yellow flags while George Russell completed a lap that stewards later confirmed as legal.
- Stewards examined telemetry and GPS traces and concluded Russell lifted sufficiently under the single yellow, so his pole time stood and the result was confirmed by race control.
- Kimi Antonelli said he mistakenly read the zone as double-waved yellows, aborted his final lap and accepted the error while calling for a review of flag handling in high-speed corners.
- Ferrari principal Frederic Vasseur and other team figures argued the deployment of only single yellows — despite the medical car being sent — could send the wrong safety message and said double yellows or a red flag would have been more appropriate.
- The episode highlights rising reliance on telemetry to adjudicate compliance, follows recent stewarding controversies in Monaco, and is likely to trigger formal calls for clearer marshal protocols and review of when double yellows or red flags should be used.