Imola GP qualifying result changes as F1 stewards punish driver over 'misunderstanding'

 A grid penalty handed out after the end of qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix has changed the result of the session. Oscar Piastri qualified on pole at Imola, narrowly edging out Max Verstappen who had to settle for second.

The session took longer than usual to be completed thanks to two crashes in Q1 which caused significant delays to proceedings. The first came just a few minutes in when Yuki Tsunoda lost control and smashed his Red Bull into the tyre barrier.

The car dramatically flipped over but, fortunately, came back to land the right way up. The Japanese driver was taken to the medical centre as a precaution but was cleared by doctors with no lasting damage done as a result of the crash.

But another happened not long after when Franco Colapinto lost control of his Alpine, which he is driving for the first time this weekend after the decision to drop Jack Doohan in his favour, and buried the nose into a tyre barrier at high speed.

The Argentine had already done enough to qualify for Q2. But because his Alpine was smashed up, he could take no further part in the session and had to settle for 15th on the grid for Sunday's race.

Or so he thought. After the session had concluded, Colapinto was summoned to the stewards, accused of failing to follow the race director's instructions during qualifying.

He was accused of entering the fast lane in the pits before a restart time had been confirmed after Tsunoda's crash, which is against the instruction given to all drivers before this weekend's action. And, despite his and the team's apologies during the hearing, he was handed a one-place grid penalty.

He will serve it on Sunday, dropping to 16th on the grid. As a result, Liam Lawson will rise by one place in the starting order with Colapinto now behind him.

Explaining their decision in an official FIA document, the stewards wrote: "The team representative stated that he gave the instruction for the car to creep out but not be fully released. The driver misunderstood the instruction and entered the fast lane before the re-start time was officially confirmed, in breach of the race director’s event notes.

"Once this was done, it was too late to reverse course and the team instructed the driver to proceed down the pit lane. The team argued that there was no sporting advantage gained in this case as there was sufficient time remaining for other teams to perform their run plans as this was the start of the session. The team representative and the driver apologised for the inadvertent breach.

"The stewards consider that this breach was inadvertent but it did require a sporting penalty to be imposed. However as the breach was unintentional and this did not result in any sporting advantage, we decided to impose a one position grid penalty. A similar breach in different circumstances, could entail a more severe sporting penalty in future."