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Jolyon Palmer has blamed Mercedes driver George Russell for a crash involving Carlos Sainz at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Russell failed to serve a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane when he stopped behind the safety car, which earned him a drive-through.
The British driver was running third after the race restarted, but his second penalty of the afternoon demoted him outside the points.
Lewis Hamilton is up to second in the drivers’ standings after the Monaco GP! Where will George Russell finish this year?
Photo by Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
Jolyon Palmer has ‘never seen anything like’ what George Russell did at Monaco restart
Russell passed Isack Hadjar at the standing restart following the red flag, but he had fallen six seconds behind the top two of Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton by the time he reached the tunnel.
Speaking in commentary for F1TV, Palmer suggested this was a deliberate but bizarre tactic. His penalty meant it was almost impossible for him to score points barring a fresh injection of ‘chaos’.
With Russell leading a congested pack into the Loews Hairpin, Audi driver Nico Hulkenberg collided with Sainz. Only two corners later, Franco Colapinto lunged down the inside of the Williams, spinning him around.
Colapinto escaped a penalty, while Hulkenberg was docked 10 seconds, demoting him out of the points. Palmer thinks the root cause of the incidents was Russell’s driving.
What a wild Monaco Grand Prix! Were there too many penalties, or did you enjoy the chaos?
“It all starts from George Russell on a go-slow mission, like he’s on a protest,” he said. “He got up to third place. He’s got acceleration because he managed to get through the tunnel okay.
“But through the hairpin section, he just fancied sitting in the middle of the road, backing the entire back up and then of course, you get chancers outside the top 10 thinking, ‘It’s now or never, let’s go for it.’
“I’m trying to work out what’s going through George’s head to drive like that on the first lap. He’s obviously got to now bail out on the next lap to take his drive-through penalty.
When it was put to Palmer that Russell has previously struggled on restarts, he said: “Oh, come on. He was so slow. It can’t just be that. I don’t know if he’s just trying to cause chaos further back or hope that there’s another stoppage or a complete track blockage or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It briefly looked as if Russell had a problem as he trundled through the first sector, but it may be that he was trying to create a gap to drive into. The more stretched out the field became, the better his chance of salvaging points, but it was always likely to be a long shot.
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