The FIA has explained why Mercedes driver George Russell escaped punishment for incorrectly activating his DRS mechanism during the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Russell was running in second, well behind leader Oscar Piastri , when he began experiencing electronic issues with his Mercedes, losing brake-by-wire and encountering a variety of other distracting gremlins.

The British driver also experienced an issue with a third-party-delivered transponder that briefly saw him move to the bottom of the leaderboard, which also confused his automatic DRS activation system, which it operates on.

As per normal procedure the FIA authorised Mercedes to use a manual override mode, with Russell advised by the team to use a back-up radio button that also serves as a manual DRS activation button. Russell

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