The FIA has awarded grid penalties to Mercedes drivers George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli ahead of tomorrow’s F1 Bahrain GP.
Mercedes entered Bahrain qualifying as the closest rivals to Oscar Piastri’s and Lando Norris’s Mclarens.
Russell and Antonelli performed well in Q1, with Russell’s pace giving McLaren cause for concern.
However, Esteban Ocon’s Q2 crash brought out the red flag, resulting in Mercedes needing to cover of Ferrari and Red Bull’s pace.
The team misjudged the session restart time when the cars entered the pit lane, the Russell and Antonelli leaving the garage before it officially reopened.
Investigating the incident after the session, the FIA stewards awarded a one-place grid penalty to both cars. Russell will now start third, Antonelli in seventh.
Full statement from FIA stewards in Bahrain on grid penalties
The Stewards heard from the team representative, the Race Director and FIA Single Seater Sporting Director and reviewed video, timing, team radio and in-car video evidence. The drivers were excused from attending.
The team representative, Mr Shovlin, in evidence stated that he gave the instruction for the cars to be released, in error, having misinterpreted the message posted on page 3 of the limina Screen, “estimated re-start time to be a message advising the actual re-start time. He argued that there was no sporting advantage gained in this case as there was sufficient time remaining (11 minutes) for other teams to perform their run plans.
It was also noted that the team’s Sporting Director, Mr Meadows, was not present at the event and that normally he would be involved in the release process.
The FIA Single Seater Sporting Director stated that such a move could be a sporting advantage in that it could enable a team to perform its run plan whereas other teams may not be able to.
The Stewards agree with this view particularly where there are only a few minutes remaining in the session.
The FIA Sporting Director argued that there needed to be a sporting penalty rather than a team fine, otherwise in future teams would release their cars as soon as the estimated re-start time was published. The Stewards agree with this view Mr Shovlin argued that it was possible to give a non sporting penalty if the Stewards declared that it was not to be taken as a precedent but also stated that if a sporting penalty was to be given, it should be mitigated.
The Stewards agreed with the view that this breach required a sporting penalty however accept that the breach was unintentional and a genuine mistake by the team.
