F1, Frederick Vasseur "seer": no penalty for George Russell

After being sub judice for several hours, George Russell’s second-place finish in the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix has been confirmed by race officials. The latter, in fact, ruled that the Mercedes driver had appropriately slowed down to compensate for the accidental opening of the DRS in an area where the mobile wing is not usable.

The stewards released a document explaining how, from the analysis of Russell telemetry, it can be inferred that the Briton has yes gained 0.02 seconds with the’opening of the DRS, but has also lost 0.28 seconds for purposely slowing down in the next corner, reason why no penalty was applied.

Talking to the microphones of ‘Sky Sport‘, Ferrari’s team principal, Frederic Vasseur, had already on the sidelines of the race imagined a scenario that did not include penalties for the Briton: “Russell opened the mobile wing by mistake on that lap, he had no one in front – explained the French engineer -. The advantage he took from it was very small, I did not do it on purpose. I do not think he will be penalized”.

The result at the checkered flag was therefore confirmed, with Oscar Piastri in a McLaren winning ahead of Russell in a Mercedes and Lando Norris’s other McLaren. Just off the podium were the two Ferraris, with Charles Leclerc fourth and Lewis Hamilton fifth. Rounding out the Top 10 were Max Verstappen in Red Bull, Pierre Gasly in Alpine, Esteban Ocon in Haas, Yuki Tsunoda in the other Red Bull and Ollie Bearman in the second Haas in order of finish.