Verstappen was referred to the stewards following qualifying for driving unnecessarily slowly in the moments prior to an incident with George Russell in the latter stages of Qualifying 3.
That exchange saw Russell, on a build lap, forced to leave the race track to avoid the Red Bull Racing driver, running over the gravel in the process.
Verstappen went on to qualify on pole from Russell by 0.055s.
However, an investigation has seen the world champion-elect stripped of top spot as officials handed him a one-place grid penalty.
“Car 1 was on a different preparation strategy to that of Car 63,” the stewards summary noted.
“Car 1 was well outside of the delta and the driver of Car 1 explained he had let Cars 4 and 14 past.
“The driver of Car 63 claimed that he had adhered to the delta and did not expect Car 1 to be on the racing line.
“He stated that if a car was going slow in a high speed corner, it should not be on the racing line.
“The Stewards regard this case as a complicated one in that clearly Car 1 did not comply with the Race Director’s Event Notes and clearly was driving, in our determination, unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances.
“It was obvious the driver of Car 1 was attempting to cool his tyres.
“He also could see Car 63 approaching as he looked in his mirror multiple times whilst on the small straight between Turns 11 and 12.
“Unusually, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap.
“Had Car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would have most likely been the usual 3 grid position penalty, however in mitigation of penalty, it was obvious that the driver of Car 63 had clear visibility of Car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”
The penalty sees the order of the front row reverse, with Russell now set to start from pole with Verstappen out of second place.
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