Why Russell kept Austria pole + What Antonelli got wrong

Why did George Russell keep his Austrian Grand Prix pole position despite passing yellow flags because of Max Verstappen’s crash in qualifying? 

That’s a question many were asking when Russell crossed the line in Q3 and denied Ferrari a one-two in what initially appeared confusing circumstances. 

Some of that initial confusion was over which signal was issued because of Verstappen’s off - with even Kimi Antonelli being caught out by misidentification. 

A single waved yellow flag was shown for the stricken Red Bull on the approach to the double Turn 9/10 right-hander that ends the lap. 

So when Russell arrived on the scene, he lifted off the throttle and downshifted two gears. Russell still improved and took pole position; such was the strength of the lap prior to that. 

“The lap was unbelievable and then obviously I got the single yellow in the last sector but I did a 100 metre lift, lost a huge amount of time…I don’t have the answer for sure, where it came from, but it felt very sweet,” Russell said. 

“It’s a corner where you can see quite a lot, a huge lift and I was going to assess the situation as soon as I got to the corner, if the car was there.

“As it was a single yellow, I was pretty confident there was no danger. As soon as I turned into the corner, I already saw the green up ahead.

“I actually thought the car had continued, because I didn’t see the car, it was so far off the track, I didn’t see the car whatsoever. 

“It was only when I saw the replay after I saw it was well off into the wall.

“So yeah, I was glad common sense prevailed there.” 

This was noted by the race director because Russell unusually improved despite the yellow flag, but a ‘no further action’ was quickly issued when it became apparent Russell had respected the yellow flag. 

His final sector was only 0.027s slower than his best sector previously, but he’d improved by three tenths in the first two sectors and would have likely found even more time without his lift in the final sector. 

There was some confusion over the arrival of the ‘lap deleted’ messages shortly after Q3, but these were in reference to the in-laps of the drivers.

By the time they’d returned to Turn 9/10 the single waved yellows had been upgraded to double waved yellows, so laptimes are automatically deleted (even in-laps). 

In fact, there were 22 seconds between the flag being upgraded from single to double, in which time Antonelli and Russell passed through.

What happened with Antonelli 

Russell’s team-mate Antonelli abandoned his final lap because of those yellow flags, but that’s because he believed they were double-waved yellows, which would be an automatic lap canceller. 

His conversation with his race engineer Peter Bonnington, suggested Antonelli interpreted it as a double-waved yellow from his steering wheel dashboard, where drivers are automatically notified of yellow flags. 

Antonelli: "Yeah, Bono but I don't understand, You told me yellow yellow."

Bonnington: "Afirm, yes"

Antonelli: "I had double yellow on my dash"

Bonnington: "It's only showing single yellow here, so we'll have to have a look through that and see what your dash was trying to tell you. It was single yellow"

But after qualifying, it appeared the confusion was on the flag being shown at the marshalling post at Turn 9. 

Antonelli told media including The Race after qualifying: “It probably was my mistake. 

“I heard 'yellow yellow', but I was looking at the marshal, and probably, I don't know, I saw wrong, and I just saw two flags instead of one, and I aborted.

“Also it was hard to see, because there was the sun in the face, and I just looked at the marshal, because I think the panel, the panel went yellow, but of course you don't know if it's a single or double, so I looked at the marshal, and it was hard to see, and I just saw double yellow instead of one, and I just aborted completely.”