The precise cause of the unusual DRS fault which struck George Russell’s car during the Bahrain Grand Prix remained unclear after the end of the race.
The Mercedes driver had to cope with several problems on his car at once over the final laps of the race. One of them was the need to operate his Drag Reduction System manually, as Formula One Management did not have sufficiently accurate timing information to determine automatically when he could use it.
The problem arose FOM stopped receiving timely updates from the transponder in Russell’s car. This also caused errors in the timing graphics displayed in FOM’s broadcast and the screens available online.
However Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said after the race it was not clear whether the fault lay at their end or FOM’s. “Basically you have this beacon, when the car crosses the line, the FOM signal recognises the car, and for whatever reason it didn’t anymore,” he told Channel 4.
“So we’re not 100% sure if it was a wiring loom issue on our car or whether it was Formula 1.”
Russell was also grappling with other problems in his car’s systems at the same time. “There was a lot going on,” said Wolff. “I think this is the driver who won the race.”
His brake-by-wire system was only working intermittently. “It [kept] coming back, so you need to expect either an electronic braking or hydraulic, which is a completely different braking point, and he managed that,” said Wolff. Russell’s race engineer also warned him to expect his steering wheel display might fail.
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The driver said the final laps of the race were “exceptionally difficult” as he also had to keep his soft tyres alive over a long stint to the chequered flag. “I had all sorts of problems with the car.
“On the steering wheel, I was losing all my data. The brake pedal went into a failure mode, so I had to do all these resets.
“One minute the brakes were working properly, the next they weren’t. So I was pretty pleased when I saw the chequered flag, to be honest.”
Russell accidentally activated his DRS at one point by pressing his radio button, which also served as the manual operation for his rear wing flap.
“I don’t really know how that happened,” he said. “It was something to do with all these failures we were having.
“As soon as I saw it opened, I backed off. I lost two tenths of a second. It never happened again throughout.
“I didn’t actually click the DRS button – I clicked another button and it opened. As I said, I lost a lot more than I gained – I don’t think I even gained anything because it was open for less than a second.”
The stewards accepted Russell had activated the system accidentally, and that he ensured he did not benefit from the extra deployment, and so did not issue a penalty for the infringement.
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