Sebastian Vettel has escaped without penalty after being called to see the stewards after taking a shortcut in Q3.
After his first run Vettel was told by his engineer that he needed to do a quick in-lap because of a lack of turnaround time. He duly took a shortcut between T4 and T6.
The stewards looked into it and decided that since he subsequently crossed the line to start his last lap with 17s to go, he had gained no advantage – ie he had not gained enough to avoid hitting the chequered flag, as happened to Lewis Hamilton at Suzuka.
They thus decided that there was no breach of Article 20.13, which refers to staying within the confines of the circuit.
It’s a decision that sets an interesting precedent as in effect it means that drivers are free to cur corners in similar circumstances in the future.
On tracks with long laps teams have very little time to changes tyres and refuel between qualifying runs in the short Q3 session.
Adam Cooper F1 
It feels like Vettel is putting himself under more pressure now than before he won the title!
I think he’s trying to break every record there is for performance in a single season.
Good reaction by the team to tell him to slow down after the move today.
it does indeed seem to set a precedent… which the fia will soon have to write a rule to combat the overuse of…
it seems that while it probably didn’t gain him 17s in so doing, that anything could have happened had he taken that corner as he should have (perhaps he would have spun into the gravel, for example), so it might have made more sense to penalize him.
to get more nitpicky, he arguably put less stress on his tires by going straight rather than cornering, giving him an advantage for his next lap, and possibly the race…