The stewards have decided not penalise the nine drivers found to have been using DRS within a yellow flag zone following a collision between Esteban Gutierrez and Adrian Sutil.
Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber, Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Valtteri Bottas and Max Chilton were all called to the stewards office after the Chinese Grand Prix.
However they won’t face a penalty for their actions, despite the regulations stipulating it is illegal to use DRS when it has been declared ‘disabled’.
The FIA has likely been easy on the drivers because of problems with the telemtry link between the cars and race control which has been disabled for the opening three races of the season.
The system has been turned off whilst the FIA finds a fix for the issue, which means that DRS can’t be automatically disabled by race control and it is therefore down to the driver not to use the system under yellow flag conditions.
It also affects the cockpit lights, so drivers have to rely on radio communication and trackside flags/signal boards to know when they’re within a yellow flag zone.
