George Russell claims he didn’t get the time to open the Doctor by chance, amid many car issues on the way to second place in Bahrain Graampuri.
Shortly after the safety car period late in the race, Russell disappeared from the timing screen as the transponder stopped working despite running in second place. It was the first indication of multiple issues, meaning that it meant that we were unable to determine the gap between the other cars due to lack of GPS data.
Russell was told about the overrides that Mercedes needs to do to use DRS, but he says he responded at the time when he wasn’t within two seconds of the car before.
“It was very difficult towards the end,” Russell said. “I had all sorts of issues with the car, the steering wheel, I lost all the data and the brake pedal went into failure mode. So I had to do all these resets and the brakes were working properly for a minute.
“I really don’t know how it happened. It had something to do with all these mistakes we had. As soon as I saw it open, I lost 0.2 seconds.
“So I didn’t actually click on the DRS button. I clicked another button to open it. And like I said, I don’t think I got anything because it was open in under a second.”
The incident was investigated after the race, but in the end the steward concluded that the penalty was not justified. Russell says that holding Rand Norris down in the final stages has been one of his most satisfying results.
“Yeah, I actually didn’t have that many P2s. To be honest, he said. “I had some P3s, but I didn’t expect to be close to McLaren this weekend. Qualifying in the front row was a real surprise. And then I saw Landor on the lap behind me and thought, ‘He’s going to fly into the distance here.’ Oscar did an amazing job controlling the race, but I was really pleased to keep Rand at bay. ”