Charles Leclerc suffers a huge blow as he receives 3-place grid penalty for Sprint race, will start at P9

After the stewards determined that Charles Leclerc was impeding Oscar Piastri during the sprint shootout qualifying session, he was handed a three-place grid penalty.

Leclerc will, therefore, start the Sprint race on Saturday afternoon in ninth place. Due to the Ferrari driver's penalty, Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll, and Esteban Ocon move up one spot.

Charles Leclerc was heading into the pits, but due to the nature of the Red Bull Ring circuit, he was directly in the path of Piastri. The latter's flying fast lap was hindered a few corners before the finish line. Piastri ended up in 17th place, while Leclerc put his Ferrari at the sixth-fastest time.

The aggrieved driver complained about Leclerc impeding him just as he was about to start his flying lap, and the incident was noted by the stewards. Later, the stewards scheduled a meeting with Leclerc and Piastri to look into the incident. Leclerc was suspected of violating Article 37.5 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations and the meeting took place at 1:30 pm local time.

The stewards stated that Piastri told them he needed to slow down by 45kmh to avoid colliding with Leclerc. They subsequently confirmed that the rookie had lost half a second in that last sector. Leclerc claimed that his team failed to inform him to give Piastri enough space.

The stewards determined that it "was not entirely the fault of the driver" and that the scenario might have been avoided if the team had communicated better with their driver. This is not the first time Ferrari has failed to provide appropriate notice to Leclerc this season, and the driver has suffered the penalty.

The stewards eventually decided that Ferrari was really at blame for not giving Leclerc enough notice. But that the position penalty was still necessary because the regulation had obviously been infringed.

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Charles Leclerc qualifies P2 for the Austrian Grand Prix

Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the pole position for the Austrian Grand Prix while teammate Sergio Perez had another horrible qualifying session.

F1 Grand Prix of Austria - Practice & Qualifying

The one-hour qualifying session is divided into three phases with the five slowest cars knocked out in Q1 and the next five slowest cars in Q2, before the top-10 shootout in Q3. Verstappen will start ahead of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

Because this is a sprint weekend format, these sessions establish the grid for Sunday's race and have no bearing on the sprint event on Saturday.