Vettel handed three-place grid penalty for blocking!

Sebastian Vettel has been thrown off the second row of the grid for tomorrow's Austrian Grand Prix after race stewards handed him a three-place penalty.

The Ferrari driver had finished qualifying in third place, putting him immediately behind the all-Mercedes front row. But now he will start from sixth instead.

He had been under investigation for an incident that took place late in the second round of qualifying.

Vettel has just completed a flying run and was on his slow-down lap. He was cruising through turn 1 when the Renault of Carlos Sainz approached at high speed at the beginning of his own final qualifying run of Q2.

Vettel admitted he had not seen the Renault in his mirrors, and he had not received a radio call from the Ferrari pit wall to warn him of its approach.

Sainz had to take evasive action which sent him off track, damaging his front wing. Fortunately the Spanish driver's existing time in Q2 was still good enough to put him through to the final round, and into the top ten pole shoot-out.

"Obviously I wasn't meaning to block him or ruin his lap," Vettel told reporters afterwards. There was no intention, obviously. Normally I get told [by my race engineer] but on this occasion I wasn't."

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Sainz gesticulated angrily at Vettel at the time, but had cooled down by the time he spoke to the media having qualified in ninth place.

"It's tough luck on him that he wasn't told I was coming," he told Sky Sports F1. "I don't want to put too much blame on Sebastian."

However the stewards took a dim view of Vettel's lack of awareness in the situation.

"It is the belief of the Stewards that notwithstanding the absence of a radio call, the driver of car 5, being aware of the issue of rear vision with his mirrors, should not have been so slow and on the racing line, during a slowdown lap in Qualification," they said in an official FIA bulletin.

"Having reviewed all alleged impeding incidents since the beginning of 2016, the penalty of a drop of three grid positions is consistent with all other similar incidents."

As well as the three-place grid penalty, Vettel has received a penalty point on his superlicence. That makes it six for the last 12 month period.

Vettel also incurred the displeasure of the race stewards last weekend when he spun Valtteri Bottas at the start of the French Grand Prix.

With Vettel demoted down the grid, Kimi Raikkonen will now move up into the vacant third place grid spot. He will be joined on the second row by Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Haas will be celebrating a fifth-place start for Romain Grosjean, with Vettel now due to start alongside him. He will be keen to make up for lost ground the minute the lights go out at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday afternoon.

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