Photos ‘clearly show’ Leclerc went off-track in Zandvoort clash – Russell

George Russell insists there is no doubt over whether Charles Leclerc went off the track to overtake him at Zandvoort.

Race control originally ruled Leclerc strayed beyond track limits during the incident at turn 12 on lap 32. Leclerc was informed of the breach during the race.

However in a decision four hours later the stewards decided that the evidence Leclerc had gone off was “inconclusive”. They issued no penalty for the incident, which damaged Russell’s car, costing him up to three-quarters of a second per lap, according to his team.

Russell said it only became clear after the stewards’ meeting that Leclerc had left the track. “To be fair to the stewards, they didn’t have a clear-cut angle that clearly showed he was off-track,” he told the official Formula 1 channel.

“You could sort of believe that he was off and it was clear he was off, but there was no camera angle or photograph at the time that clearly showed he was off the track.”

Immediately after the incident, Russell told his team he thought Leclerc had gone off the track. “There was no doubt in my mind because I knew that I was over the white line,” he said. “But I understand it from their view.

“Obviously we’ve now seen photos since that clearly showed he was off track. So I don’t think any clarification is needed. Sometimes decisions are correct, sometimes you don’t have the info at the time.”

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While Leclerc later retired from the race, Russell went on to finish fourth. He said he could have been on the podium if he had qualified better.

“Things could have been very much different with slightly different outcomes,” he said. “Obviously Hadjar had an amazing weekend and a really great qualifying.

“We were only a few milliseconds behind so if we had a slightly better job on Saturday I think we would have been on course for finishing the race in P4 and then obviously with Lando [Norris’s] failure that would have changed. But in the end after a very bad weekend P4 was a good result.”

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