George Russell insists he gained no time accidentally opening his DRS amid a number of car issues on his way to second place in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Soon after a safety car period in the second half of the race, Russell disappeared from the timing screens as his transponder stopped working, despite still running in second place. That was the first sign of multiple problems that were to follow, with the lack of GPS data meaning he could not judge his DRS gap to other cars, nor could they to him.
Russell was told of an override he would need to do by Mercedes in order to use DRS, but he faces an investigation for his rear wing flap opening when he wasn’t within a second of a car in front, a moment he says he responded to at the time.
“It was exceptionally difficult towards the end,” Russell said. “I had all sorts of problems with the car, the steering wheel, I was losing all my data, and the brake pedal went into failure mode, so I had to do all these resets and one minute the brakes were working properly, the next they weren’t. I was pretty pleased when I saw the checkered flag, to be honest.
“I don’t really know how that happened [with the DRS]. It was something to do with all these failures that we were having. As soon as I saw it opened, I backed off. I lost 0.2s and it never happened again throughout.
“So I didn’t actually click the DRS button. I clicked another button and it opened. And as I said, I lost a lot more [and] I don’t think I even gained anything because it was open for less than a second.”
The incident is under investigation post-race and, as it had an impact on other cars around him, any potential penalty remains unclear, but for now Russell is classified in second place and says holding off Lando Norris in the closing stages makes it one of his most satisfying results.
“Yeah, I mean I’ve not actually had that many P2s, to be honest,” he said. “I’ve had a few P3s, but we did not expect to be anywhere close to McLaren this weekend. Qualifying on the front row was a real surprise, and then seeing Lando right up there on lap one behind me, I thought, ‘He’s going to fly off into the distance here.’ Oscar [Piastri] did an amazing job to control the race, but to keep Lando at bay, I was really pleased about.”
