Not Just George Russell
The Bahrain Grand Prix, held yesterday at the Sakhir circuit, was marked in its final stages by an incredible series of DRS issues affecting some of the leading cars. The chaos began with electrical problems suffered by George Russell. The Mercedes driver, who ultimately finished in an impressive second place, repeatedly lost the use of his ECU.
Russell had disappeared from the timing sheets and the GPS monitor; in addition, the ECU controls the opening of the DRS, allowing it to be used only in designated areas and only when within one second of the car ahead. At this point, Russell was instructed by the team on how to bypass the faulty ECU and use the DRS ‘manually’ if needed. This is where the British driver made a small mistake, accidentally activating the mobile wing when he wasn’t allowed to. However, the stewards decided not to penalize him, considering his significant slowdown of almost three-tenths in the following section as enough compensation.
Radio Warning to Lando Norris
Some images, however, showed that Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc also had an abnormal rear wing opening for a few tenths of a second, which in Charles Leclerc’s case even fully opened in a corner, while the Ferrari driver was being chased by Lando Norris’s McLaren. Analyzing the radio communications, it emerged that Norris himself was starting to experience the same problem as George Russell. The championship leader was explicitly told over the radio to “use the DRS only when we are 100% sure we can use it.”
Normally, if a driver presses the DRS activation button outside the zone or with too large a gap from the car ahead, the wing does not open. As noted by the Italian media, it’s likely that McLaren was also beginning to experience ECU issues, so the risk was a potential penalty for an irregular wing opening. In the end, no one was penalized, but clearly, more than a few things went wrong in terms of ECU control at Sakhir.
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