Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said the team had consulted lawyers about their situation and they are in conversations with the FIA on the matter.
Wolff said: “We were on the phone with our lawyers to look at what can we do for George. A drive-through, if it didn’t happen at the end, is equivalent of 20 seconds’ race time. What would 20 seconds race time have meant for his result?
“Do we think that we realistically have a position, a chance of reverting the result? I don’t think so, but we definitely have to give it a go if we see that there is a millimetre of chance to do so and bring him back to whatever it was before.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said it was “a very complex case and we do feel we should consider appealing”.
The situation raises the possibility that Russell could lose the championship as a consequence of an error by race officials.
But there is already precedent for that happening.
In Abu Dhabi in 2021, race director Michael Masi incorrectly applied the rules during a safety-car period at the end of the race, and his actions led directly to Lewis Hamilton being overtaken on the last lap by Max Verstappen, and the championship passing from the Briton to the Dutchman.
At that time, Mercedes challenged the decision but their protest was rejected.
There were questions about how the FIA conducted that scenario on that day, especially as it was later admitted that Masi had committed a “human error” and was sacked.
But stewards realised there was nothing within the rules that they could do to alter the result.
In this case, there seems to have been a series of failures of communication within the FIA and between the FIA and the official timekeepers provided by commercial rights holder F1.
Teams raised the issue of the pit-lane speed limit during the weekend and their comments were ignored.
Those conversations were, it seems, not passed to the stewards, nor to the timekeepers.
And extraordinarily, when stewards asked the race director during the race whether there were any concerns about the measurement of the pit-lane limit, they were told there were not, even though there were some in the FIA who were aware of concerns there might be.
The situation also raises issues about how teams react to in-race penalties in the future. Many – such as pit-lane speed limits – cannot be appealed against by regulation. Will teams now ignore them all to fight after a race?
