George Russell gets five place grid penalty, other drivers are acquitted
F1 News
- GPblog.com
The stewards were busy during and after qualifying, with several incidents that needed to be investigated. In the end, only George Russell was punished.
During qualifying, Lewis Hamilton ended up in the gravel pit, after which he swung back onto the track and took quite a few stones with him. In order not to cause any accidents yellow flags were waved, but according to the stewards, these were ignored by George Russell. By ignoring the flags he was able to advance to Q2. This is charged to the driver and as a result, he gets a grid penalty of no less than five places.
Other drivers not punished
In addition, a lot happened in the pit lane. It seemed that Charles Leclerc was sent out of his garage at an unsafe moment. After watching the video footage however, the stewards decided it wasn't an obvious unsafe release. The Monegasque therefore gets no punishment. The same goes for Lance Stroll, who was investigated for the same incident.
Finally, at the end of Q1, Esteban Ocon would have negatively affected Kimi Raikkonen's car. The Finn was working on his fast lap, while Ocon was just about to start his hot lap. Because the Frenchman was aware that Raikkonen was coming and therefore decided to go full throttle earlier, the stewards decided that the cars were not close enough to each other to punish Ocon.