Lewis Hamilton clinched Saudi Arabian Grand Prix pole, as the championship leader Max Verstappen crashed at the Jeddah track’s final turn when on the way to beat his nearest rival Hamilton.

During the Saturday third free practice session witnessed number of dramatic situations at Jeddah corniche circuit for inaugural Said Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton was involved all three different incidents during the final practice session. Initially he breached double waved yellow flag, but the post-session investigation declared no further action for alleged failure to respect double waved yellows and the governing body confirms marshalling System was activated at Light Panel Number 6 accidentally.

Second and third incident was – the Brit impended AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and also Nikita Mazepin‘s Haas. After a flying lap Hamilton slowing down his Mercedes on the turn one as the Frenchman quickly came up behind the Mercedes champ, but Gasly immediately move outside the track. On the same lap seven-time world champion impended flyer Mazepin on the blind Turn 8 racing line and the Haas rookie luckily escaped from huge crash incident.

The incident with Mazepin was more significant – regarding this incident FIA verdict confirms Hamilton handed a reprimand, but also imposed a €25,000 fine on Mercedes, stressing the importance of communicating traffic information on Jeddah’s narrow and blind lay-out.

The verdict read: “The Stewards heard from the driver of Car 44 (Lewis Hamilton), the team representative and have reviewed video and the marshalling system.

“The Race Director reported to the Stewards that the double yellow flag warning on the FIA Marshalling System was activated at Light Panel Number 6 accidentally, for less than one second. As the on-board video of Car 44 (to be released by the Commercial Rights Holder following this decision) clearly shows, there was no yellow flag displayed, no yellow lights were displayed to that driver and the yellow warning light was not visible on the driver’s steering wheel.

“Unlike other incidents this year, there was no yellow flag or yellow light displayed to the driver (the driver already being well into the marshalling sector when the system was briefly activated) hence no breach of the regulations has occurred.”

Hamilton was also summoned for an alleged yellow flag breach but was cleared after the stewards found the system was activated accidentally.

“The Race Director reported to the Stewards that the double yellow flag warning on the FIA Marshalling System was activated at Light Panel Number 6 accidentally, for less than 1 second,” a separate bulletin from the FIA read.

“As the on-board video of Car 44 (to be released by the Commercial Rights Holder following this Decision) clearly shows, there was no yellow flag displayed, no yellow lights were displayed to that driver and the yellow warning light was not visible on the driver’s steering wheel.”

“We’ll have a good look at it,” he said before the deadline.

“It feels a little inconsistent with what we’ve seen two weeks ago, so we have the right to an appeal.

“We’ll have a look at the information, we haven’t looked at it that closely.

“These decisions are so late, the team management and the team have to focus on qualifying, so we’ll have a look and see if there’s anything that’s untoward.

“The one thing we desperately want is consistency.”

Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Helmut Marko even went as far as to say that the team had lodged an appeal.

He told Servus TV: “Max gets five grid positions in Qatar, and here suddenly yellow is no longer yellow. There’s another interpretation, and it can’t go on like this: to interpret it in such an arbitrary way.

“It was a yellow flag, a clear yellow on the display. The team should have at least given a warning.

“We appealed, but now we have some other worries. We are following it up.”

The FIA has confirmed Red Bull did not appeal the decision on Hamilton’s yellow flag practice incident at Formula 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, despite the team hinting it might. Which means Hamilton will face no fresh scrutiny over the matter.

Lewis Hamilton made provisional pole for Mercedes in his second attempt, his title rival Max Verstappen clocked quickest time in his final attempt in the first two sector, and he was pushing hard in every moment, but the Dutch locked up heading into the final turn and collided with the wall.

Red Bull’s squads had yet to fully assess the damage, but Red Bull spokesperson said the team would not take any risks and replace the gearbox if there’s a doubt of any damage.

“That was looking like the lap of the year. It’s a great shame, he just grabbed the front into the last corner, he tried to keep the momentum… and unfortunately he run out of road.” Red Bull boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports.

“It’s pretty brutal. Let’s hope the gearbox isn’t broken.”

“He’ll be frustrated, I’m sure. He knows what a good lap it was. He just needs to put that behind him. He knows what can still happen in the race.”

“It was a mighty mighty lap. We’re in the back foot here and he was pulling something very special out the bag. ”

“Hopefully it’s not a gearbox penalty because that would be especially brutal.” Horner added.

Yeah, it’s of course terrible – Verstappen. The Dutchman will start Sunday’s race from third behind the Mercedes duo Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. If the crash has damaged Max’s gearbox, he would drop him five places down the order.

“Yeah, it’s of course terrible,” Verstappen said after the qualifying session. “But that was generally a good qualifying.

“It was a bit hard of course to switch on the tyres here on the street circuit, but I knew the pace was there and it showed in the last segment.

“I don’t really understand what happened, but I locked up and I still tried to of course keep the car on the track, try to finish the lap but I clipped the rear and had to stop.

“P3 is a bit disappointing of course today, knowing what lap I was on. Nevertheless, it shows that the car is quick and let’s see what we can do in the race.”

On the chance of a penalty, Verstappen said: “I don’t know. I immediately stopped, so let’s see.”