Russell’s weekend to forget
George Russell was already enduring a difficult weekend in Monaco. Throughout the event, he found himself consistently behind teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli and spent much of the race stuck in traffic, unable to make meaningful progress.
The pit stop phase could have provided a chance to turn his race around, but instead it became the moment that effectively ended any hopes of a strong result. During one of his visits to the pits, Russell was handed a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane, an issue that affected several drivers during the Monaco Grand Prix.
What happened during the second pit stop?
When the Safety Car was deployed while Russell was running in third place, the Mercedes driver made his second pit stop of the race. However, he failed to serve the five-second penalty that had been imposed earlier.
The oversight triggered a much harsher punishment: a drive-through penalty. That sanction dropped Russell down to 13th place and ensured he would leave Monaco empty-handed, scoring no points from a weekend that had already been going badly.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained how the situation unfolded.
“It was a complicated situation because Kimi had just lapped George,” he said. “When the Safety Car came out, our plan was only to bring Kimi into the pits for fresh tyres. We had calculated that George, after making a pit stop, serving the penalty and waiting behind Kimi, would lose position to Hadjar. So we told him to stay out.”
A costly misunderstanding
However, events quickly became more complicated.
“When we called Kimi into the pits, we received the message that the Safety Car would pass through the pit lane with the group of cars. Kimi stopped as planned, but we didn’t explicitly tell George not to stop,” Shovlin revealed.
The confusion was made worse by a standard Mercedes procedure that ultimately misled Russell.
“It’s a normal procedure because plans can always change,” Shovlin continued. “But George saw that his tyres were ready and decided to pit. We didn’t have enough time to tell him to stay in the fast lane.
“The mechanics weren’t expecting him to stop and were not prepared to serve the penalty during the pit stop.”
That misunderstanding proved extremely costly. Instead of using the Safety Car period to minimise his losses, Russell found himself penalised again, turning a difficult Monaco Grand Prix into a complete disaster and leaving Mercedes without any reward from his side of the garage.
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