“Car 63 is judged at fault for the incident” – George Russell will miss out on starting inside the top 10 after being found guilty of causing a collision with Carlos Sainz.
George Russel’s curse of not winning a point with Williams might just extend with a three-place grid drop pushing him down to P12 for tomorrow’s race at Silverstone.
The offence was committed during the opening lap of the sprint qualifying race, Russell causing a collision with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, and sending him towards the back of the track. Sainz did well to recover and qualifying P11, and will now start at P10, and he seemed content with the judgement.
“I think I deserve to be in front of him. Starting tomorrow it would be a bit unfair for him to start the race in front of me after the obvious mistake he did today.
“It happens to all of us, it has happened to me in the past but you also need to accept the consequences of when you do these sort of mistakes.
“Normally the stewards on lap one, they kind of close their eyes a bit more compared to later in the race but for me, this mistake was a bit too obvious.”
Race Director report on the incident
“Cars 63 [Russell] and 55 [Sainz] approached turn 6 with Car 63 on the inside, in the middle of the track, and Car 55 on the outside.
“Car 63 locked the front brakes briefly and then understeered towards the edge of the track at the exit of the turn and contacted Car 55, which was forced off the circuit and onto the grass. Car 63 is judged at fault for the incident.
“The Stewards note that breaches of the regulations of this sort in a race normally result in time penalties, which are scaled based on normal Grand Prix race lengths.
“Both because of the shorter length of Sprint Qualifying and because it is used to establish the grid for the race, the Stewards feel that grid position penalties, as imposed here, are more appropriate.”
