Mercedes discover George Russell's Bahrain GP penalty fate as Lando Norris wait ends

has escaped a penalty for using his DRS outside of the permitted zones at the after a lengthy trip to the stewards. The Mercedes racer holds on to second place, ahead of Lando Norris on the bottom rung of the podium. Under the current sporting regulations, F1 stars can only use DRS when they are within one second of the car in front and inside the permitted DRS zones on the circuit. However, due to a technical issue, Russell breached this rule in Bahrain.

This issue was known to the broadcast at the time, and Russell's radio messages showcased the work going on with race engineer Marcus Dudley to work around the technical issues, which were also affecting the Brit's brakes. In the end, the 27-year-old held on for an impressive second-place finish .

Russell was then placed under investigation, leaving him at risk of a five-second post-race penalty that would have dropped him behind both Norris and Charles Leclerc.

However, the stewards opted against penalising the Mercedes driver following a lengthy review. "The connection between the automated DRS activation system and the car failed due to issues with a timing loop provided by an external party," the stewards' report explained.

"Therefore the FIA authorised manual activation of the DRS in accordance with Article 22.1 h). At the time the driver was experiencing a brake-by-wire issue and other electronic issues. He was at that time advised to use an auxiliary button in the cockpit which serves as a back up radio button but also serves as a manual DRS activation button.

"On the straight between turns 10 and 11 he tried to radio the team using this button but instead accidentally activated the DRS. The DRS was activated for a distance of 37 metres on a straight of approximately 700 metres.

"Whilst he gained 0.02 seconds, he gave up 0.28 seconds at the next corner to compensate. This was confirmed by telemetry. Accordingly whilst technically a breach occurred the Stewards decide that as there was no sporting advantage gained, no penalty is imposed."

This verdict will be welcome news for Toto Wolff, whose driver sits just 14 points behind championship leader Norris following a remarkably consistent start to the 2025 campaign. The McLaren duo are the the clear frontrunners, while Max Verstappen is also in the fight, eight points off the pace.