Rosberg escapes punishment for pole position lap

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Nico Rosberg has escaped punishment after being investigated by the stewards for setting his pole position time at the Hungarian Grand Prix under yellow flags.

The Mercedes driver took pole position with his final lap of the session, despite having to lift for a double waved yellow flag due to Fernando Alonso's spin. The incident was in the middle sector, but with Rosberg setting the fastest middle sector of the session on that lap he was called to the stewards at 19:45 local time.

45 minutes after Rosberg's visit to the stewards - and over four hours after the end of qualifying - the championship leader was cleared and retains his pole position.

"Telemetry demonstrated that the driver reduced speed significantly into Turn 8," the stewards decision read.

As a result, Rosberg will start from pole ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who had been hampered by Alonso spinning in front of him and aborted his final run in Q3.

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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.