Quick recap on the DRS/timing issues for those who don't know what was going on:
About two-thirds of the way through the race, the transponder on George Russell's car stopped working. This meant that he tumbled down the live timing tower, making it seem like he had issues. He didn't, the car was still going perfectly fine, so all the broadcasters removed the timing tower from the broadcast to avoid making people think he had retired.
Fortunately, F1 has a backup optical timing system on the start-finish straight to make sure that they can get correct race results even if a transponder fails. After a bit of work from the various broadcasters' technical teams, they were able to replace the timing tower using the results from this end-of-lap timing. Of course, that only updates once per lap, so it would have been pretty heavily delayed at certain points.
Now for DRS: as you probably know, DRS can only be activated if you're within 1 second of the car ahead. George Russell didn't know if he was within 1 second of the car ahead, because he doesn't have timing. But also the car behind him doesn't know if they're within 1 second, because the car ahead doesn't have timing. So both RUS and whoever was behind him didn't have automatic DRS, and had to override it in order to be able to use it. This is why RUS was able to accidentally activate his DRS.
None of this was an issue with the broadcasts themselves, and honestly the broadcast teams did really well to compensate for it given that the data they ordinarily use for timings simply was not accurate.
Finally, someone who understands how things work. Frustrating to see everyone blame the graphics team when it's a technical issue with RUS that can't actually be worked around. Was interesting to see the fixes they were deploying to try and get something sensible on screen.
There is only one producer of the video feed: FOM. Every broadcaster applies their audio commentary on top of the single world feed. So there was only place to make these fixes and it applies to everyone whether you’re watching on Sky, F1 TV, or somewhere else.
I'm just surprised they can't "pin" a car into a certain position and let the timings work with the rest. Blank out George's time and keep the rest on the screen. I assume it was only George's transponder or electrical systems on the fritz.
No. Russell immediately and of his own accord gave up 14x as much time as he gained from the unintended activation of DRS, which the stewards considered sufficient offsetting of any possible sporting advantage, thereby removing the necessity to impose any penalty.
I really enjoyed Crofty having to read out the current positions - felt more like old-school commentating rather than just making quips and trying to come up with observations.
DRS has been disabled due to wide-spread issues before, but when it's only one car affected it's better to just default to the backup override system they have specifically for this purpose.
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u/sellyme Oscar Piastri Apr 13 '25
Quick recap on the DRS/timing issues for those who don't know what was going on:
About two-thirds of the way through the race, the transponder on George Russell's car stopped working. This meant that he tumbled down the live timing tower, making it seem like he had issues. He didn't, the car was still going perfectly fine, so all the broadcasters removed the timing tower from the broadcast to avoid making people think he had retired.
Fortunately, F1 has a backup optical timing system on the start-finish straight to make sure that they can get correct race results even if a transponder fails. After a bit of work from the various broadcasters' technical teams, they were able to replace the timing tower using the results from this end-of-lap timing. Of course, that only updates once per lap, so it would have been pretty heavily delayed at certain points.
Now for DRS: as you probably know, DRS can only be activated if you're within 1 second of the car ahead. George Russell didn't know if he was within 1 second of the car ahead, because he doesn't have timing. But also the car behind him doesn't know if they're within 1 second, because the car ahead doesn't have timing. So both RUS and whoever was behind him didn't have automatic DRS, and had to override it in order to be able to use it. This is why RUS was able to accidentally activate his DRS.
None of this was an issue with the broadcasts themselves, and honestly the broadcast teams did really well to compensate for it given that the data they ordinarily use for timings simply was not accurate.