“I recently watched the Rafa [Nadal] documentary and also the Ronaldinho documentary,” George Russell said on Thursday in Barcelona when asked how he was going to ‘clear his head’ after all the recent setbacks.
“It’s not plain sailing every tournament, every match, every season. Ronaldinho was a hero of mine. I didn’t realise that he had so many years and matches and competitions of struggle. We always only remember the highlights of all of these greats. [But] everybody goes through these moments, whether it’s through personal performance, things out of their control, injury – whatever it is.
“That’s where we are now. I’ll come through.”
The 2026 season, which was supposed to bring Russell the world title on a plate the same colour as his car, has instead delivered one blow after another. And if the unfortunate timing of the safety car in Japan and the engine blow-up in Canada can be put down as a routine part of a complex and technical sport, the punch George took in Monaco was the kind that lands below the waist. Especially given that, a few days later, it became clear that the chain of events which undid his race had been triggered by a completely freak set of circumstances beyond his control.
Although the Monaco pitlane saga is far from over, with McLaren and Red Bull still weighing up whether to lodge a protest, and Toto Wolff saying he is consulting lawyers to see whether Mercedes has any avenue to seek justice for Russell, whatever happens next is unlikely to change the zero next to George’s name in the Monaco points column. Because there is one particular difference between his case and all the others.
Of the five drivers who received penalties, two were able to serve them during the race when Lance Stroll crashed at Anthony Noghes with 18 laps to go and brought out the safety car. Alpine opted not to stop its drivers, a decision that would prove crucial in hindsight. Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton pitted immediately after the safety car was deployed, using the neutralised conditions to clear their five-second penalties. Hamilton effectively lost nothing, but Piastri surrendered a position to Gasly, who stayed out.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Ironically, it was the Frenchman who ultimately became the main beneficiary of the whole chain of events triggered by the incorrectly configured timing loops in the Monaco pitlane, despite initially appearing to be one of its biggest victims. In his emotional post-race interview, Gasly cited the “unfair reasons” that “robbed” him of a podium in Monaco. But in reality, those very same reasons were what made it possible for him to finish P3 on the road, whereas the Alpine driver would never have come close to it had the timing system been working as it should.
The Frenchman not only got ahead of Piastri when the McLaren driver stopped to change tyres and serve his penalty, but also gained a position on Russell moments later, as the real drama for the Mercedes driver unfolded during that same safety car period.
How Russell made it worse himself
Russell earned his penalty after stopping on lap 31 – and at that point it did not yet look particularly suspicious. Hamilton had committed a similar offence three laps earlier, but in George’s case one could have assumed he had simply overpushed on pit entry or pressed the button too early on pit exit while trying to undercut Isack Hadjar, whose rear wing he had spent the entire opening stint staring at.
In truth, there were already signs that something wasn’t quite right. Both Russell and Hamilton were penalised for the exact same excess – just 0.1km/h – and it was only when the system caught Franco Colapinto, also at 0.1km/h over the limit, that the stewards reached out to race control to ask whether there was an issue. But they were told there wasn’t.
Still, by the time Stroll – using the Canadian’s own wording – was pushed by his engine into the TecPro barriers at Anthony Noghes, Russell appeared to be out of trouble. Hadjar was 16 seconds behind the Mercedes driver, and had it not been for the safety car, George would have had nothing to worry about as he had more than enough margin to offset his five-second penalty.
One unfortunate circumstance for Russell was that, while he was stuck behind Hadjar – who was struggling with engine issues – he lost so much time that his lightning-quick team-mate Kimi Antonelli lapped him a dozen laps before Stroll’s crash. But it only became an issue because of several other factors.
George Russell was stuck behind Isack Hadjar for 30 laps
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
The crucial moment came when race control decided to send the safety car through the pitlane to allow marshals to clear the Aston Martin, and Russell became unsure whether he needed to pit. Remembering his penalty, he believed he still had enough margin to Hadjar and that it would be the right time to serve it, as the bunched-up field had suddenly turned it into a much bigger problem. But George had simply overestimated the gap.
In theory, the gap was large enough for Russell not only to pit and serve his penalty, but also to rejoin ahead of the Red Bull driver. The problem was that Mercedes decided to pit Antonelli, probably believing that stopping Russell would still be too risky from a track-position perspective.
Everything happened too quickly. Russell was told he would be “staying out” by his engineer, but upon seeing the safety car entering the pitlane, the driver radioed back: “We’re going through the pitlane, get tyres.”
What didn’t help was that Mercedes occupied the first pitbox after pit entry in Monaco, leaving the team with very little time to deliver a clear instruction. Russell reduced his speed almost to walking pace while waiting for confirmation and for Antonelli’s stop to be completed first, which – unfortunately for George – also took a couple more seconds than normal.
“What am I doing?” he asked the team when he was already metres from the pitbox. By that stage, Mercedes had around four seconds to tell him not to stop – and that proved insufficient. Crucially, while there was no answer from the team, Russell could see that a second set of fresh tyres was ready. And given his own request just seconds earlier, he took that as confirmation that he was expected to stop as well.
“It was at a very complicated point of the race because Kimi had just overtaken George, so George was a lapped car,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained after the race. “Now, when the safety car came out, the plan was to bring Kimi in – and we were just doing the calculations, working out that George, with his pitstop, with the penalty, and now the added fact that he had to wait for Kimi’s car to be serviced, to understand whether he would still be ahead of Hadjar. We concluded he would not.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images
“So we told George to stay out. Now, having missed Kimi’s stop the first time [as he was already past the pit entry] we still had an opportunity the second time around. So we called him in and at that point the message came up that the safety car will go through the pitlane. So Kimi was being serviced as planned. What we failed to do was get the message to George to stay in the fast lane. And both sets of tyres were there. That’s normal, because you do that in a safety car [period] because your plans can change depending on what the other teams do.
“Although we told George to stay out, when they came through the pitlane, he saw his tyres. We didn’t have time to get a message to him to stay in the fast lane. And because he assumed that they were for him, he pulled into the box.”
That came as a surprise to the mechanics, who were clearly caught out. While some appeared to hesitate, presumably remembering George’s penalty, others immediately started working on the car. Not only did it cause delay and confusion, but the penalty was not served correctly, as Russell did not spend five seconds stationary in the pitbox with nobody working on the car. The fact that Hadjar simply drove past the stationary Mercedes was no longer the biggest issue.
The drive-through
As the stewards noticed the penalty had not been served as prescribed by the regulations, they had no choice but to issue Russell another one, this time a more severe sanction.
The drive-through penalty, which the stewards deemed the appropriate punishment for a driver who had failed to serve an existing penalty correctly, seemed a logical choice. But it effectively dropped Russell out of contention for points, as he only had to serve it after the final restart. He tried to back the field up as soon as the race resumed and then use Mercedes’ pace advantage to salvage at least some points, but there simply wasn’t enough time to build a sufficient gap. As a result, he emerged from the pits outside the top 10 after serving the drive-through.
Russell was running third after the last restart in Monaco
Photo by: Andrej Isakovic / AFP via Getty Images
Ultimately, a split-second decision to pit when the team expected him to stay out undid Russell’s race.
Mercedes’ call to keep Russell on track and not risk losing a position to Hadjar simply to serve the penalty was entirely logical. Yes, the Frenchman would have lined up right behind him for the restart, but George would still have had enough laps to try to build a five-second gap. It would still have been a challenge, but ending up stuck behind the Red Bull again was a far less attractive prospect.
Alpine, meanwhile, opted not to pit Gasly during the race, choosing instead to keep track position ahead of Piastri. But while the Australian had already rid himself of his five-second penalty, Pierre was still carrying his, with the sanction due to be added to his race time after the chequered flag. It was a far riskier approach – not least because track position alone was unlikely to count for much in such circumstances. To believe that the Frenchman, on 15-lap-old hard tyres, would simply pull away from a McLaren on fresh softs was highly optimistic. Some might argue it would have been wiser to give up track position to Piastri in order to create a buffer to the cars behind, many of which had also switched to fresh softs.
Speaking to the media on Friday in Barcelona, Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen was asked whether his experience working for both the FIA and FOM had helped in any way in securing the successful Right of Review. His answer was straightforward: “To be honest, no.”
Yet could a team led by someone with 40 years of Formula 1 experience across a variety of roles at least have considered during the race that there might be another way to keep Piastri behind in the final Monaco classification? For example, by asking the FIA to investigate what was causing all these speeding offences in the first place…
Either way, avoiding serving the penalty during the race certainly proved very convenient and undoubtedly helped Alpine overturn Gasly’s penalties a few days later. Those who served their penalties during the race effectively never had the same opportunity.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
What Nielsen did acknowledge, however, was that some suspicions about the system being slightly off had already emerged earlier in the weekend. Across practice and qualifying there had already been five speeding fines, four of them for marginal offences of less than 0.5km/h.
He also confirmed that “there was a meeting that was attended by some teams” where the still “undiagnosed” issue had been discussed before the race.
Staying out and avoiding serving the penalty would potentially have been useful for Mercedes as well, at least in terms of challenging it in the same way Alpine eventually did. And in Mercedes’ case, the team definitely knew about a possible timing-system issue earlier in the weekend, as both Russell and Antonelli had been caught “speeding” on Friday by 0.1km/h and 0.3km/h respectively.
How many points Russell really lost?
The most bitter aspect of all this for Russell is probably the fact that there is no realistic way to recover the lost points, despite all the talk of Mercedes exploring possible legal options.
George wasn’t particularly quick in Monaco, to say the least. Nevertheless, it’s relatively easy to conclude that he could have still finished third in the race, following Verstappen’s early retirement and Leclerc’s crash. At least Russell got ahead of Hadjar, so essentially he did the minimum required. And if there is anything he can blame himself for, it’s the decision to dive into a pitstop when nobody was expecting him.
What that effectively means is that the Monaco weekend – and that particular issue with the official timing system – cost Russell another 15 (or at least 12) points in the championship battle. And that is perhaps the biggest consequence of the entire pitlane saga.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / Getty Images
There may yet be further developments, but it is still difficult to see how any of them would change anything for Russell.
It was a freak incident, one that is unlikely ever to happen again. Ultimately, it stemmed from a completely random human error, with no malice involved. Yet Russell’s 2026 season has become significantly harder because of it.
Instead of what could have been a 53-point gap to Antonelli in the standings, the deficit is now one point short of one of Verstappen’s favourite number. And it is hard to escape the conclusion that, should the championship battle remain alive and Russell manage to close the gap later in the year, Monaco will be brought up again and again.
And if he finishes the season fewer than 15 points behind Antonelli, there will be no shortage of people pointing to the Monaco pitlane as the place where the title slipped away.
On the bright side, though, if Russell still manages to pull it off despite all the setbacks, it is going to make one hell of a documentary.
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