Max Verstappen promoted on Portimao grid after penalty announced

Max Verstappen has been promoted on the grid for Saturday's GT World Challenge race at Portimao after a rival team was penalised for a technical infringement.

The four-time F1 world champion had originally qualified 15th alongside team-mates Ben Barnicoat and Chris Lulham in the No. 3 Mercedes-AMG GT3.

However, the trio will now start from 14th at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve after Haupt Racing Team had all its qualifying lap times deleted.

The penalty came after the team's No. 65 Ford Mustang GT3 was found to have breached the regulations, handing Verstappen Racing a one-place boost ahead of the three-hour race.

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Why has Max Verstappen been promoted?

Haupt Racing Team had initially qualified 13th overall, with Nicolas Baert, Eduardo Coseteng Jr. and Maxime Oosten also securing pole position in the Silver Cup class.

However, the team's data logger had not been connected during qualifying, meaning no data was recorded.

The infringement resulted in all the car's qualifying lap times being deleted, dropping the Ford Mustang to the back of the 61-car field.

That promoted Verstappen, Barnicoat and Lulham to 14th, while Silver Cup pole position passed to the No. 30 Team WRT BMW of Amaury Cordeel, Matisse Lismont and Ignacio Montenegro.

Watch Max Verstappen's onboard livestream from Portimao below.

Verstappen Racing struggle in Portimao qualifying

Verstappen Racing had endured a difficult qualifying session on Friday, with the three drivers struggling to extract the maximum performance from their Mercedes.

Barnicoat could only manage 21st in Q1, before Lulham finished 16th in Q2 and Verstappen posted the 14th-fastest time in Q3.

Their combined average lap time of 1:42.624 left them just over half a second off pole position, which went to the No. 2 Boutsen VDS Porsche.

Barnicoat admitted afterwards that the team had struggled to find the right setup, with the car bouncing along the straights and producing sparks as it ran close to the ground.

Despite their qualifying difficulties, Verstappen and his team-mates will now look to fight their way through the field when the three-hour endurance race gets underway at 5pm local time (5pm UK) on Saturday.

Updated grid positions for GT World Challenge at Portimao

After the penalty was applied, this is how things look:

WATCH LIVE: Max Verstappen in GT World Challenge at Portimao today

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Written by

Graham Shaw - Consultant Editor

Digital sports leader with 30 years of senior level experience running global brands. Built sportinglife.com to be a behemoth in the UK as well as being in charge of the Planet Sport network of sites including planetf1.com, football365.com, teamtalk.com and planetrugby.com. Then grew goal.com to be the world's biggest soccer website in 18 languages and 37 territories. Was GM of Portals for Perform Group (now DAZN) with overall responsibility for sportingnews.com, spox.de and voetbalzone.nl.

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