26 September 2023 , 09:38
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George Russell has called on F1 race stewards to take into account the consequences of an incident when handing down penalties.
Red Bull star Sergio Perez has been involved in two incidents in his last two races, being given five-second penalties for both. The first came last week in Singapore when a late-race collision with Alexander Albon saw him punished.
But the five-second penalty he was given effectively did not matter, as he finished more than five seconds ahead of ninth-placed Liam Lawson. Then in Japan on Sunday, he made contact with Haas driver Kevin Magnussen.
Again Perez was handed a five-second penalty, though the incident caused him to retire the car. Remarkably, and totally legally, Perez 'unretired' to serve the penalty at a pit-stop before again retiring, ensuring the penalty does not role over to the Qatar Grand Prix.
According to the rulebook, the stewards can hand out anything from time penalties to stop-and-go penalties in response to incidents. But Russell believes that the direct consequences of incidents must be considered, and dealt with accordingly.
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He said: "I’ve been in a position where if I look at Austin last year when I made the mistake with Carlos and I got five seconds for it. That was probably drive-through worthy. It’s difficult because we say we shouldn’t judge the consequences of the incident. But sometimes you need to judge the consequence of the incident.”
While Perez was forced to retire twice, Red Bull as a team were able to secure the Constructors Championship, thanks to Max Verstappen winning the race. And the Mexican admitted that it was far from a good day for him.
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Russell's comments come after Red Bull's Sergio Perez was involved in a series on incidents (Formula 1 via Getty Images)“It would have been nice to clinch the Championship in a different way but it has been an incredible year and I am so happy for the Team today. My race ended up not being straightforward at all," he said.
"We had a poor start and everything went downhill from there unfortunately. The collisions caused too much damage so we brought the car in to assess. After fixing the car we then had a penalty to serve, which we did, and then brought the car in.
"Despite this, it has been a really great day for the whole team and to finally get that title is really special. I am proud of each and every single one of the team; they have done a really tremendous job.”
Russell meanwhile was locked in a battle with team-mate Lewis Hamilton, though at one point he was running in the podium positions. The Englishman would ultimately finish seventh, leaving him disappointed.
"We will take the positives from today. The one-stop strategy didn’t seem to be the optimal one at the start of the day, but we made it work better than expected. Ultimately though, we just didn’t have the pace this weekend to challenge those ahead," he said.
"I’m glad we tried something different, but the end result was a fair representation of where our speed was. I think we achieved the maximum we could today. In the closing stages, we were pushing but ultimately, I don’t think anything we could have done would have changed the result."