Two more grid penalties have been added to Saturday's grid after separate stewards' hearings following Qualifying. Sergio Perez was handed a 3-place drop for unnecessarily impeding Oscar Piastri, while Carlos Sainz picked up a heavier 5-place penalty, plus two penalty points on his licence, for failing to slow sufficiently for yellow flags.
The Perez incident happened between Turns 19 and 20, where Perez was on a preparation lap as Piastri approached on a flying lap. The stewards found Perez had been warned twice over the radio that Piastri was closing in, but rather than holding a predictable line on the right-hand side as the Race Director's traffic-management instructions required, his tyre-warming move put him in Piastri's path and forced the McLaren driver to lift. The stewards didn't consider the moment dangerous, but ruled that Piastri being forced to come off the throttle was enough on its own to establish unnecessary impeding, and applied the standard penalty for the offence.
Sainz's case centred on a double-yellow zone through Turns 2 and 3. He'd been warned by his team to lift, and told the stewards he'd deliberately treated it as one continuous reduction in speed across both marshalling sectors rather than slowing distinctly in each one. The stewards rejected that explanation, pointing to telemetry showing no meaningful reduction in Marshalling Sector 4, with his only real reaction coming later, in Sector 5. Because each yellow sector carries its own obligation to visibly slow down, that later reaction couldn't cover the sector he'd missed.
Both penalties apply to the race, adding Perez and Sainz to a Saturday grid that already features Alonso and Stroll serving their own power-unit-related drops.