How Mercedes’ ‘inexcusable’ disqualification cost Russell F1 victory at Spa

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — When small margins decide the outcome of a Formula One race, it is usually measured in tenths of a second at the finish line.

That’s what happened at the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, when George Russell crossed the line with a lead of 0.526 seconds over his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton. Two hours later, however, an equally small margin, albeit measured in kilograms, cost him the same victory.

Once the fuel was drained from Russell’s car, it came in at two different FIA scales, at 796.5kg, 1.5kg under the required weight to comply with F1’s technical regulations. As devastating as this was for F1’s last winner, there was no reason to dispute the facts and no grey area to exploit, leaving Mercedes and Russell with no choice but to accept the disqualification.

“We have to accept it,” team principal Toto Wolff said after the race. “We clearly made a mistake and we have to make sure we learn from it.”

“We’ll go back, assess what happened and understand what went wrong. Losing a one-two is frustrating and we can only apologise to George, who rode such a strong race.”

In a social media postRussell called the disqualification “heartbreaking.”

In a sport where every detail is considered, checked and rechecked, it is rare for a car to be found underweight after the checkered flag. It is not uncommon for teams to design a car as light as possible, but ballast is used to ensure that it will weigh 798kg (or more) no matter what happens after a race.

The last time this happened was in 2006, when Robert Kubica’s BMW was disqualified from seventh place at the Hungarian Grand Prix for being 2kg underweight.

Crash damage (defined as “accidental loss of a component of the car” in the regulations) can be a valid excuse for a car weighing under the minimum weight, but Russell’s Mercedes crossed the line intact.

Mercedes will spend the next few days investigating the reason for the oversight, but initially it appeared to be linked to the remarkable one-stop strategy Russell used to take victory.

Using a single set of hard tyres for 34 laps, Russell’s Mercedes moved from fifth to the lead as his rivals made a second pit stop. This was a risky strategy, not least because most teams believed a double stop would be the quickest way to reach the chequered flag before the race.

When Russell suggested the idea of ​​a one-stop over the team radio, Mercedes’ strategy modelling indicated that the planned two-stop strategy and the eventual one-stop would leave the car fifth at the finish.

“We have race planners who tell us where the cars are going to come out at the end, and at one point we saw that we had to cover (Oscar) Piastri and (Charles) Leclerc with Lewis, so (putting Hamilton on a two-stop strategy) was absolutely obvious,” Wolff said. “Nobody expected it to last, and we ran longer and longer, and then the planners said George would be fifth in both cases, with one stop or two.”

“So we said, ‘let’s take the risk’. Both drivers were happy with the tyres at that stage, but with Lewis we had to do it to cover (the other cars). So we extended the stint and the tyres stayed absolutely fine. The performance was pretty consistent until the end.”

Russell had nothing to lose and after 20 laps he took the lead as Piastri made his second stop. Remarkably, Russell’s tyres were still in good condition at this stage and as the laps went by performance did not drop off as the team had feared.

But while the tyres’ performance was still good, the rubber on the tyres continued to wear out. A set of F1 tyres (without the rims) weighs 42kg when new, but can lose up to 3kg during a long stint.

Russell’s second stint, from lap 10 to lap 44, was longer than any other driver in Sunday’s race and longer than Mercedes had planned to start. After the disqualification, the team felt that rubber loss due to tyre wear was likely the reason the car was under-rated at the finish.

“We do not yet understand why the car was under-rated after the race, but we will investigate thoroughly to find the explanation,” said Mercedes technical director Andrew Shovlin. “We believe that the loss of rubber during the one-stop was a contributing factor, and we will work to understand how this happened.”

“We will not make excuses, however. This is clearly not enough and we must ensure that it does not happen again.”

Mercedes had never used hard tyres at the weekend before they were fitted to Russell’s car in the race. The team had thought it would be the hardest-wearing race tyre, but with only two sets available per car for the three-day event, they had kept both sets for both cars for Sunday’s race.

The team faced a series of major set-up changes after Friday practice. The car had looked uncompetitive when fitted with an improved floor in the first and second practice sessions, meaning they had to revert to an earlier floor specification and make significant set-up changes.

With rain throughout Saturday’s practice, it was impossible to know what impact the changes to the car would have on dry running, including the likely rate of tyre wear. Furthermore, the team’s historical data was difficult to use as the tyres behaved differently to previous years following the resurfacing of large sections of the track in Sectors 1 and 3.

Another factor, unique to Spa-Francorchamps, is that due to the length of the circuit (7.0 kilometres), drivers do not take a cool-down lap before returning to the pits after the chequered flag. Instead, they take an immediate right after Turn 1 and drive the pit lane in reverse to reach parc ferme and celebrate their victory with their teams.

On a normal recovery lap at any other circuit, drivers venture into the run-off areas to pick up debris and rubber that has settled on their hot, sticky tyres. This practice can add up to 2kg to the weight of the tyres (although this figure depends on how the driver searches for them) and race engineers regularly remind their drivers to collect rubber after the chequered flag. However, with no recovery lap at Spa, Russell was unable to collect any rubber.

Combine all of the above and Mercedes’ mistake is more understandable, although, as Shovlin said, it remains inexcusable.