George Russell and Kimi Antonelli both drop one grid position for entering the fast lane in the pit lane before the re-start time had been confirmed.

The Bahrain stewards heard from Mercedes representative, Andrew Shovlin, the Race Director and the FIA's Single Seater Sporting Director and also reviewed video, timing, team radio and in-car video evidence, though the drivers were excused from attending.

Shovlin, in evidence stated that he gave the instruction for the cars to be released, in error, having misinterpreted the message posted on page 3 of the Timing Screen, "estimated re-start time" to be a message advising the actual re-start time.

He argued that there was no sporting advantage gained in this case as there was sufficient time remaining (11 minutes) for other teams to perform their run plans.

It was also noted that the team's Sporting Director, Ron Meadows, was not present at the event and that normally he would be involved in the release process.

The Single Seater Sporting Director stated that such a move could be a sporting advantage in that it could enable a team to perform its run plan whereas other teams may not be able to.

The stewards agreed with this view particularly where there are only a few minutes remaining in the session.

The FIA Sporting Director also argued that there needed to be a sporting penalty rather than a team fine, otherwise in future teams would release their cars as soon as the estimated re-start time was published. The stewards agreed with this view also.

Andrew Shovlin argued that it was possible to give a non-sporting penalty if the stewards declared that it was not to be taken as a precedent but also stated that if a sporting penalty was to be given, it should be mitigated.

The stewards agreed with the view that this breach required a sporting penalty however and accepted that the breach was unintentional and a genuine mistake by the team for which Shovlin apologised.

The stewards therefore decided to impose a one position grid penalty on each driver, warning that a similar breach in different circumstances, could entail a more severe sporting penalty in future.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Manama here.