George Russell points blame for major Monaco GP punishment | F1 | Sport

George Russell has critisced the stewards’ decision to give him a drive-through penalty and believes a software problem caused the issue. The Brit finished out of the points in 13th after he was hit with a late drive-through penalty for incorrectly serving an earlier five-second sanction for speeding in the pit lane.

Russell was first handed a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. Yet when he next pitted amid the late safety car chaos, Russell’s Mercedes team forgot to serve their penalty.

Russell won the first race of the season, but it has been a downward spiral since and he now finds himself 68 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli.

And reacting to the punishment he received, he said: “Firstly, I’m not too sure why we got a penalty.

“I was on the pit-limiter before the line and after the line… clearly there’s a problem in the software. Five seconds, not ideal, not the end of the world.

“There was confusion in the pit-stop. Getting a drive-through… the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. P3 down to P14.”

Russell quickly went to the stewards’ room during the red-flag interval and revealed: “I just asked ‘can we review it afterwards?’ If I serve the drive-through now… I probably gained a tenth of a second and it cost me 12 positions.

“They said rules are rules; you don’t serve your penalty, it’s a drive-through. I could’ve won the race 2 weeks ago, could’ve come third today… 40 points down the drain.”

Antonelli drove into the history books by becoming the youngest winner of the Monaco Grand Prix. Antonelli broke Lewis Hamilton’s 16-year record and is now the firm favourite to take this year’s title.

“It’s been an incredible weekend, incredible race, and one of those days where we had incredible pace,” he said. “The car was giving me the confidence to push, it was a very enjoyable day.

“The job is not finished, it’s a long season. We have to keep breaking the bar and keep performing like this. The team have given us an incredible car, it’s a really good moment so far.

“I wasn’t super keen on restarting! I just gather my emotions and thoughts, looked at some data, got tyres in the right temperature. Once I got away, I knew we’d make it into turn 1 ahead.”