Race stewards at the Austrian Grand Prix have decided to take no further action over an allegation that Renault's Jolyon Palmer impeded Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen during the first round of qualifying.
“I think it was on my second lap," recalled Raikkonen. "It was an okay lap but obviously on the last corner he [Palmer] slowed down.
"I don't know whatever happened but I also had to slow down a lot. We had to use another set of tyres, which was not the plan. Obviously that was not ideal."
"I think I might have blocked Kimi," Palmer admitted at the time after being eliminated in Q1. "But he's through, I'm not."
The incident occurred when Raikkonen had to lift and brake early for turn 10. The stewards decided that he has clearly been impeded. However, the question of whether Palmer had "unnecessarily" impeded the Finn to the point where a sanction was required proved more complicated.
According to the stewards' ruling, Palmer was setting up for a fast lap and was behind four cars doing the same. Raikkonen was at least 400 meters behind and could not be seen by Palmer, as Sebastian Vettel was between them.
Renault gave Palmer notice about Vettel, who then pulled over to allow his team mate past. The team updated its warning to Palmer, but by then it was too late for him to take action about Raikkonen.
The Stewards reviewed whether Renault could have given earlier warning but concluded that its actions had been reasonable. For that reason, the stewards decided no further action over the incident was necessary.
Palmer will start Sunday's race from 16th place on the grid. He admitted that he had been expecting more this weekend.
"I thought we were looking stronger this weekend," he said. "Today seems to have got away a little bit. It's incredibly close.
"I knew qualifying was going to be tight," he continued. "The car feels better and the performance is closer this weekend. It’s a shame that we couldn’t hook it up in end but there is overall progress.
"We’ll look to have a good start and aim to get in the points tomorrow."
Raikkonen went on to finish qualifying in fourth place. After Lewis Hamilton's five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change, it means he starts Sunday's race from third.
"The qualifying session was a bit messy, with the traffic and the yellow flags," he sighed. "I’m not very happy overall. But considering how tricky it has been, third place is not bad. It could have been much worse.
"The whole weekend had been quite tricky so far. Yesterday, for certain reasons, we did not have a very good day. This morning, we basically started from zero.
"The feeling with the car was getting better and better, but it was not easy to recover from yesterday."
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