George Russell’s ‘anybody who knows racing’ reaction to controversial US GP penalty

George Russell found himself slapped with a five-second time penalty at the United States GP, one he called “not correct” for “anyone who knows racing.”

When it comes to United States GP time penalties, much of the focus was on the late Max Verstappen and Lando Norris podium battle which resulted in a five-second penalty for Norris, but before that Russell had received that same punishment for being judged to have forced Valtteri Bottas off the track.

George Russell calls for permanent F1 stewards

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

“What?!” Russell replied when news of the penalty came through over team radio, with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff calling it a “total joke.”

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the race, Russell said that going purely by “the letter of the law”, his penalty was justified, but add in any understanding of racing and that was no longer the case.

Russell said: “I think the stewards have a really difficult job because the regulation is so large, when you watch an incident in slow motion, or you pause it at a given point, in my penalty with Valtteri, the rules state if you’re not ahead at the apex and you push someone wide, you get a penalty. So by the letter of the law, my penalty was correct.

“But anybody who knows racing, anybody watching it, knows it was not correct. I don’t really know how we move forward.”

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Russell would put forward a solution of his own, that being to end the system of stewards rotating from race to race.

“I think we’d probably all want to see probably the same stewards all year long, so that the drivers and the stewards can all be on the same page, and that we can apply common sense, when needed, rather than having to really follow the letter of the law,” said Russell.

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com, former F1 racer turned FIA steward Johnny Herbert recently explained how money is the main reason for the steward panel rotating race by race.

“Should there be one steward every single race? You can argue that or all four the same? Yes, you could argue that,” said Herbert. “But it’s time. We don’t get paid [a lot] for it. We get $300 a day or something. So it’s very small.

“So that’s when it changes to a proper job. Where you’re committing to a season, to 20 or more races, for example. So it’s very, very different from that point of view.”

Russell ultimately crossed the line P6 in Austin.

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