The provisional Mexican Grand Prix grid

The big news ahead of Sunday’s Mexican GP is Max Verstappen’s demotion from pole position to P4 for ignoring yellow flags in qualifying.

Verstappen was the man to beat on Saturday afternoon as the Red Bull driver put in a 1:14.910 to claim provisional pole.

He lowered that to a 1:14.758 on his second run, purple in the final sector.

However, in doing so he ignored the waved yellow flags for Valtteri Bottas’ final corner crash.

Verstappen, who was defiant in his actions, was handed a three-place grid penalty for ignoring the flags and dropped to fourth on the grid.

Charles Leclerc will start from pole position ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.

Mercedes have yet to announce whether Bottas, whose W10 was heavily damaged in the crash, has a grid penalty for a gearbox change or even a pit lane start for a new chassis.

Team boss Toto Wolff is hoping to avoid penalties.

“We are 90 percent confident we can fix without any penalties. It was an unusual angle of impact so I think we got away with that,” he told Crash.net.

The provisional grid (10am GMT)
1 Charles Leclerc Ferrari
2 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari
3 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
4 Max Verstappen Red Bull *
5 Alex Albon Red Bull
6 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes
7 Carlos Sainz McLaren
8 Lando Norris McLaren
9 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso
10 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso
11 Sergio Perez Racing Point
12 Nico Hulkenberg Renault
13 Daniel Ricciardo Renault
14 Kimi Raikkonen Alfa Romeo Racing
15 Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo Racing
16 Lance Stroll Racing Point
17 Kevin Magnussen Haas
18 Romain Grosjean Haas
19 George Russell Williams
20 Robert Kubica Williams

* three-place grid penalty for ignoring yellows

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