Max Verstappen could lose his pole position for the Mexican Grand Prix as the stewards are investigating whether he failed to slow sufficiently for yellow flags following Valtteri Bottas’s crash.

The Red Bull driver passed waved yellow flags at the scenes of Bottas’s crash at turn 17, then improved his lap time from 1’14.910 to 1’14.758.

The stewards have summoned him for an “alleged breach of Appendix H, Article 2.4.5.1 b of the FIA International Sporting Code, failure to slow for yellow flags in turn 17 at 14:00.”

Verstappen admitted in the post-race press conference he did not back off after seeing the yellow flag. “It didn’t really look like it did it?” he replied when asked if he had lifted, adding: “No.”

Bottas was running ahead of three drivers when he crashed, one of which was Verstappen. The other two were Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton appeared to pass the crash scene before the yellow flags were displayed, and Vettel noticeably reduced his speed.

Last year Verstappen was given a three-place grid penalty at the Russian Grand Prix when the stewards found he did not slow sufficiently for yellow flags when Sergey Sirotkin crashed in Q2.

This was one of 11 occasions when a driver has been investigated for speeding under yellow flags in the past four seasons. Of those, four resulted in three-place grid drops, four resulted in five-place grid drops, and three led to no action being taken.

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2019 F1 season