Stroll pole at risk from stewards; Sainz gets penalty

Lance Stroll has another fight on his hands at Istanbul Park if he's to keep hold of his first-ever F1 pole position.

The Racing Point driver successfully fought off Max Verstappen in Saturday's Turkish Grand Prix qualifying to take the top spot by almost three tenths of a second in Q3.

But now Stroll has been summoned to appear before the FIA race stewards over a report that he did not respect yellow flags during the session - allegations that could see him suffer a grid penalty that would cost him his pole position.

Read also: Stroll takes shock maiden pole in rain-hit Turkey qualifying

The report states that Stroll did not slow down sufficiently on his pole position lap to sufficiently respect yellow flags that were being waved at turn 7.

It appears that the yellow flags were out because Stroll's team mate Sergio Perez had just spun off the track a few seconds earlier.

The team told Stroll of the incident over the team radio, but was also told: "That was a single yellow so keep pushing"

A number of other drivers have also been summoned to see the stewards this evening, including Lando Norris who is reported to have failed to slow down under yellow flags in Q1.

His McLaren team mate Carlos Sainz is the first driver to be confirmed as receiving a penalty, after being handed a three-place grid drop for impeding Perez.

"[Sainz] was exiting the pits as [Perez] passed through turn 1,” the stewards stated in their report. “[Perez] caught up to [Sainz] in turn 2 and 3 and was unnecessarily impeded ... at that point and through several subsequent turns.

“While extraordinary track conditions clearly impacted the situation, radio communications from the team clearly warned [Sainz] that [Perez] was behind him," they added.

As a result of the ruling, Sainz drops from his original 13th place on the grid and still start Sunday's race from 16th.

A similar verdict on Stroll would see the Canadian lose pole and line up in fourth place on the grid, with Verstappen taking over at the front.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.