The precise cause of the unusual DRS fault which struck George Russell’s car during the Bahrain Grand Prix remained unclear after the end of the race.
The Mercedes driver had to cope with several problems on his car at once over the final laps of the race. One of them was the need to operate his Drag Reduction System manually, as Formula One Management did not have sufficiently accurate timing information to determine automatically when he could use it.The problem arose FOM stopped receiving timely updates from the transponder in Russell’s car. This also caused errors in the timing graphics displayed in FOM’s broadcast and the screens available online.
However Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said after the race it was not clear whether the fault lay at their end or FOM’s. “Basically you have this beacon, when the car crosses the line, the FOM signal recognises the car, and for whatever reason it didn’t anymore,” he told Channel 4.
“So we’re not 100% sure if it was a wiring loom issue on our car or whether it was Formula 1.”
Russell was also grappling with other problems in his car’s systems at the same time. “There was a lot going on,” said Wolff. “I think this is the driver who won the race.”
His brake-by-wire system was only working intermittently. “It [kept] coming back, so you need to expect either an electronic braking or hydraulic, which is a completely different braking point, and he managed that,” said Wolff. Russell’s race engineer also warned him to expect his steering wheel display might fail.
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The driver said the final laps of the race were “exceptionally difficult” as he also had to keep his soft tyres alive over a long stint to the chequered flag. “I had all sorts of problems with the car.
“On the steering wheel, I was losing all my data. The brake pedal went into a failure mode, so I had to do all these resets.
“One minute the brakes were working properly, the next they weren’t. So I was pretty pleased when I saw the chequered flag, to be honest.”
Russell accidentally activated his DRS at one point by pressing his radio button, which also served as the manual operation for his rear wing flap.
“I don’t really know how that happened,” he said. “It was something to do with all these failures we were having.
“As soon as I saw it opened, I backed off. I lost two tenths of a second. It never happened again throughout.
“I didn’t actually click the DRS button – I clicked another button and it opened. As I said, I lost a lot more than I gained – I don’t think I even gained anything because it was open for less than a second.”
The stewards accepted Russell had activated the system accidentally, and that he ensured he did not benefit from the extra deployment, and so did not issue a penalty for the infringement.
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2025 Bahrain Grand Prix
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- Russell’s transponder was ‘frazzled and charred’ after Bahrain Grand Prix DRS drama
- “Don’t give me too much now”: Hamilton’s search for speed at Ferrari continues
MacLeod (@macleod)
14th April 2025, 8:15
FOM looked they switch off the system after Russel had his problems..
Jere (@jerejj)
14th April 2025, 10:03
Partly, yes, although everyone else still received sector times for all the last 20 laps, while he received none.
S Arkazam
14th April 2025, 9:01
“It was something to do with all these failures we were having.” – Russell
David
14th April 2025, 9:19
Impressive from Russell to keep Norris behind while his car was failing apart. He’s thriving in this new team leader role.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
14th April 2025, 9:54
He is doing a great job, almost under the radar as the focus is on the McLaren and Red Bull psychodrama. There was a tendency to talk down his performance in the Mercedes over the last couple of years but I think he is proving why the team have seen him as the future.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
14th April 2025, 10:22
He never seems very quick. But then he’s up there on the podium again. I can’t see a WDC, but then he’s flying under the radar a bit.
Jere (@jerejj)
14th April 2025, 10:06
I’m still baffled by the ‘manual’ reference because the DRS activation always happens manually regardless of whether it’s done by pressing a button on the front side or a switch/flap on the back side, so the yellow button on the top left both Mercedes drivers use is just as equally manual as an auxiliary switch on the back.
Nevertheless, more likely a FOM issue since they’re presumably responsible for the timing system.
S Arkazam
14th April 2025, 10:11
A bit of a weird coincidence then that at the same time BBW, screen, and other systems were failing.
PS FIA rather than FOM I presume.
PeteB (@peteb)
14th April 2025, 10:51
Sounds more like an electrical issue on the Mercedes to me that caused a a bunch of problems including issues with the signal being sent to the FIA’s sensors. It would be a very weird co-incidence for Russell to have a bunch of electrical problems in addition to the FIA’s system working fine for every car except Russell’s.
AlanD
14th April 2025, 14:34
If it was an electrical issue on the Mercedes, (and yes, it does sound more plausible), then really the penalty should be enforced. However, in this case no-one could be sure so it was right to give the driver and team the benefit of the doubt. Even if they had been sure it was driver error, Russell backed off enough to compensate for the error, and I think that is like when someone overtakes off track and gives the place back to avoid a penalty, no har no foul. So either way, I think the correct end result was reached.
anon
14th April 2025, 13:14
@jerejj the rear facing onboard camera from Leclerc’s car showed that his DRS opened briefly whilst he was going through Turn 11, and he does not seem to have made any input on his steering wheel to cause that.
Alesici
14th April 2025, 10:59
I loved his comment on the radio. Paraphrasing, he basically said, “the screen keeps on going blank, but as long as the steering wheel doesn’t fall, I should be OK.” It was in reference to Alonso’s alarming Saturday incident thankfully at low speed.
Superb drive. He sure is making it hard for Merc to sack him to instead get Verstappen. No wonder Max and his manager seem so upset. Maybe they’re now hoping Hamilton will retire early.
Biggsy
14th April 2025, 12:10
Why is anything related to sporting matters and policing rules, being handled by FOM, instead of FiA?
As far as I’m concerned, these things should be handled by FiA.
AlanD
14th April 2025, 14:45
I think we should remember that the FIA is a global organisation which deals with everything from F1 to caravan clubs, and them having so much say in the day to day rules of F1 is also an oddity. If you think about, say, the BTCC, the rules for that competition are set by Motorsport UK, and are based on Motorsport UK National Competition Rules which apply to all of our domestic series. The series is under the FIA umbrella whch means some more general rules apply which apply to all FIA-endorsed events, but the nitty gritty of the rules, the stewarding, etc, is all down to Motorsport UK. The promoter, BRSCC (or something like that), also has a say in the rules, e.g. choosing how many races there will be in the season, duration, branding rules, etc.
S Arkazam
14th April 2025, 15:51
Biggsy probably refers to the use of FOM as being responsible for race timing and/or the responder.
FOM (Formula One Management) is part of Liberty Media and is only responsible for the commercial part (TV broadcast etc.), not the technical part.
They will take the timing data from whoever collects and manages it on behalf of the FIA for the F1 championship and races.
FIA in the end is responsible for the technical (and sporting) part of the sport.
It seems that Wolff (if quoted correctly) made the same mistake by referring to FOM rather than FIA.
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
14th April 2025, 13:49
A bit strange Mercedes went for the DRS override when Russell had nobody in front to benefit from it in the first place
AlanD
14th April 2025, 14:30
Presumably they needed to sort it out while he had space to think. Remember that DRS can be used to pass backmarkers etc, not just the car ahead of him in the race.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
14th April 2025, 14:44
The button Russell pressed which activated his DRS wasn’t his usual DRS button, it was the radio button, which also functions as a secondary DRS activation when needed:
https://www.racefans.net/2025/04/13/russell-keeps-second-place-after-rare-no-penalty-decision-for-drs-infringement/
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
14th April 2025, 15:42
@keithcollantine It likely would have been the panel which is usually at the side of the cockpit rather than a button on the wheel.
There will be a button box on usually the left side of the cockpit which features a secondary radio button which allows the driver to talk to the team even if there is an issue with the wheel. This is for example how Kimi Raikkonen was able to use the radio to tell his team he needed the steering wheel as he was been wheeled down the pit lane during the red flag at the Baku GP in 2017.
Craig Scarborough has it labelled in this image he posted a few years ago.
https://x.com/ScarbsTech/status/1646516389241552901/photo/1
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
14th April 2025, 18:16
Thanks @gt-racer I always wondered how he was able to shout “Mark, Gloves!” without a wheel. I didn’t realise there was a button. Makes sense. Thank you.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
14th April 2025, 15:29
If it was an issue with the FOM system in terms of something trackside then they would have lost the transponders for everyone rather than just one car but when George first vanished off the timing tower everyone else was still been tracked correctly so i’d say an issue with the wider FOM system isn’t likely.
So whatever the problem was would have been something on George’s car and that issue could be something on the overall electrical side or just a fault with the transponder on his car. A transponder fault which can’t be fixed is something that is fairly rare but can happen although they have more than 1 transponder on the car so usually even if one of them goes down you still have a backup.
The reason FOM would have turned the timing tower graphics off for the short time they did is that usually the order/gaps on the tower are updated automatically based off the mini-sectors so if one car disappears off the system with a transponder fault which can’t be rectified they will have to switch the graphics over to a backup system which only updates at the finish line.
This is why if you watch the broadcast when the tower is brought back up the gaps/position changes only show at the start line rather than at each of the mini-sectors around the circuit. A good example to show this is Verstappen passing Gasly on the last lap which wasn’t shown on the tower until Max passed the finish line at the end of the final lap when normally the order would have updated as soon as Max was ahead at a mini-sector.
AlanD
14th April 2025, 16:14
“If it was an issue with the FOM system in terms of something trackside then they would have lost the transponders for everyone rather than just one car”
On the whole, I would agree with you, but there are a couple of caveats. The first is that the transponder is an FIA supplied part, so if that part fails in the car, you can’t really hold the teams responsible for that failure, even if the rest of the car is having electrical issues. The second thought is that each transponder generates a unique binary number and there has to be a lookup system on the FIA timing systems to map that binary number to a specific car. Maybe the mapping had somehow become corrupt, e.g. the electrical problems in the car had reset the transponder and so it was transmitting the wrong code, or perhaps the transponder was operating intermittently and someone in the control room tried to fix the problem and accidentally wiped Russell’s transponder code off the system.
Interesting side point. People sometimes ask why the finish line isn’t in the same place as the start line. The start line has to be far enough along the straight to fit all the cars in behind it. The finishing line must be in line with Race Control’s box, wherever that is on that circuit, so that the Race Director can visually check the finishing order of cars, just in case two were very close together over the line and there was a transponder failure.
A.Barrister
14th April 2025, 17:50
At what point should a car get black flagged, if all of these electrical issues are causing brakes to not work? Are there fail-safes to prevent untoward things from happening? Seems if the brake by wire isn’t working on the rear brakes (intermittently), there is potential for an accident. Is the car “safe” to race in this circumstance?
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
14th April 2025, 20:08
Thankful RUS didn’t hit the ejection seat button by mistake. Are we heading to a new era of reliability problems in F1? Steering wheels coming off, other gremlins, and SAI’s side pod getting a hole in the side mysteriously.
MacLeod (@macleod)
15th April 2025, 8:24
XM (@xmf1)
16th April 2025, 1:44
Let me put on my tinfoil hat and ask did McLaren have any technical issues during the weekend? Ferrari and Merc had DRS issues, Red Bull had pitstop release light issues, etc.