Max Verstappen escaped a Singapore sprint grid drop late on Friday night. The FIA stewards found no cause to penalize him over his SQ1 overtake on Lewis Hamilton under yellow flags, and the Dutchman will line up on pole when the lights go out on Saturday.
A guilty verdict would have cost him up to five grid places in the sprint and handed pole to George Russell, with Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri climbing with him.
Perez’s Cadillac crash triggered the flashpoint
The incident came moments after Sergio Perez nosed his Cadillac into the Turn 5 barrier at Marina Bay, scattering debris around Turn 8 and triggering single yellow flags. Verstappen caught Hamilton between Turns 7 and 8 and went by on his flying lap.
On the Red Bull intercom, race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase was quick with a warning.
“You’re in yellows… single yellows,” Lambiase told him.
Verstappen replied moments later, aborting the lap.
“Err, I think I have to abort… I’ll let Lewis by again,” he said over the radio, before adding: “I think I passed him before the yellow, but I just wanted to be safe.”
On the Ferrari pit wall the view was blunter.
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“Max overtook me under a yellow flag,” Hamilton told his team.
Both drivers, together with Ferrari and Red Bull representatives, were summoned to the stewards at 22:15 local time. Verstappen’s position, that he had committed to the move before the flag was deployed and promptly handed the place back, stood up.
He keeps his 1:31.156 pole lap, 0.120 seconds clear of Russell and a further tenth up on Charles Leclerc, with Oscar Piastri on the second row.
Antonelli still leads by 132 points
The ruling matters because the title has long since drifted out of Verstappen’s hands. Kimi Antonelli leads the drivers’ standings on 320 points, with Russell second on 236, Hamilton third on 214 and Leclerc fourth on 191. Verstappen sits sixth, tied with Lando Norris on 188 and 132 points off Antonelli, with 175 still available across the remaining seven rounds.
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Saturday’s sprint, the final one of the 2026 season, starts at 5pm local time at Marina Bay.
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