Stewards exonerate Rosberg over yellow flag incident
Nico Rosberg has been cleared of any wrongdoing during his pole position lap for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1 W07 Hybrid
XPB Images
Three hours after qualifying had finished, Rosberg was summoned to the stewards for a potential breach of yellow flag rules during Q3.
The German took pole position for Sunday's race despite the yellow flags being out on his fastest lap at the end of the session.
Fernando Alonso had spun on the exit of Turn 9 on his final lap in Q3, and with his car sideways across the kerbs, the yellow flags had been brought out.
That forced Rosberg's main challenger Lewis Hamilton to back off totally on his last effort.
Rosberg was running well behind Hamilton on track, and by the time he arrived at the incident Alonso had already got going again.
And although the yellow flags were out, Rosberg lifted and lost a small amount of time to acknowledge that he was aware that there was an incident there. However, despite lifting off the throttle, Rosberg still set a fastest sector time.
"For sure, there were double-waved yellows, but I had a very, very big lift," Rosberg insisted in the post-qualifying press conference.
"I lost a lot of time as a result and, also slower than on my previous lap in that yellow segment, so I am sure it will be okay."
After a brief meeting, in which it examined video and telemetry evidence as well as Rosberg's testimony, stewards concurred that Rosberg had done nothing wrong.
Its statement read: "The telemetry demonstrated that the drivers reduced speed significantly into turn 8."
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