Carlos Sainz Jnr has kept his third place on the grid after the stewards ruled he did not rejoin the track unsafely during qualifying.
The Williams driver was investigated for potentially impeding Lance Stroll when he came back onto the track at turn five during Q1.
In a hearing convened by the stewards, an Aston Martin representative said Stroll had no complaints over Sainz’s handling of the incident.
“The team representative of car 18 [Stroll] stated that the rejoining of car 55 [Sainz] did not cause any issue to the driver of car 18 and stated that his driver did not consider the manoeuvre to be unsafe on the part of the driver of car 55,” the stewards noted.
“In view of the above and the poor visibility due to the adverse weather conditions, plus the presence of yellow flags, we determine to take no further action.”
Sainz said he hurried to get out of the run-off area because he wanted to prevent the yellow flags from disrupting too many drivers” laps.
“I went straight [on] in turn five,” he explained. “I did one of the 180s that people have to do around here. I knew I was generating a yellow flag at the time, and I was just trying to get the yellow flag to stop as soon as possible and get myself back onto the track.
I guess Lance had a yellow flag with me, so I tried to rejoin as [early] as I could and tried to avoid giving more people a yellow flag.
“But I think we were all on build-ups, trying to get the tyre into temperature, all doing mistakes. It was the beginning of Q1 when I think some people were still on inters, struggling to keep it on track—and that was me. Visibility also was extremely poor.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
2025 Las Vegas Grand Prix
Browse all 2025 Las Vegas Grand Prix articles
