George Russell received a five-second time penalty for a first-lap incident in the United States Grand Prix but the stewards considered a harsher sanction.
The Mercedes driver was penalised for leaving the track at turn 12 and gaining an advantage while fighting for position with Oscar Piastri. Russell stayed ahead of the McLaren.“I was on the inside, he was overtaking on the outside, that’s his risk,” said Russell when his race engineer Marcus Dudley warned him he was under investigation.
The stewards decided that because Russell was also fighting Isack Hadjar at the time, and the incident happened on the first lap, a harsher penalty was not deserved.
“The driver of car 63 [Russell] was defending position from car 81 [Piastri], into turn 12 and left the track, then proceeded to rejoin in front of car 81, prior to turn 13. He retained that position. Accordingly he is determined by the stewards to have left the track, rejoined it and gained a lasting advantage.
“The normal penalty for this is a 10-second penalty, however the stewards considered that the driver of car 63 had previously been pressuring car six [Hadjar] and that put car 81 into an attacking position (and therefore car 63 into a defending position). Further, this was a first lap incident and in our determination, the penalty should be mitigated to five seconds.”
The stewards chose not to penalised Gabriel Bortoleto for a similar incident on the first lap of the race when he tried to pass Franco Colapinto. They said this was because they could not determine which driver was ahead at the apex.
“At the entry to turn 11, car five (Gabriel Bortoleto) moved to overtake car 43 (Franco Colapinto) on the outside. Car 43 stayed alongside and in that battle car five left the edge of the track and rejoined ahead of car 43.
“Under the Driving Standards Guidelines, had the front axle of car five been ahead at the apex, car five would have been entitled to racing room on the inside. There was no racing room on the inside which explained why car five left the edge of the track. Had the front axle of car 43 been ahead of the front axle of car five at the apex, car 43 was not obliged to leave racing room on the outside.
“The stewards were unable, by reference to the available evidence, to reach a level of comfortable satisfaction as to which of the two cars was ahead at the apex and in these circumstances determined to take no further action.”
This article will be updated
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