SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — When small margins decide Formula One races, it’s usually measured by tenths of a second at the finish line.
That appeared to be the case at Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, when a jubilant George Russell led Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton across the line by 0.526 seconds. Two hours later, however, a similarly small margin, albeit measured in kilograms, had cost him the very same victory.
Once fuel had been drained from Russell’s car, it tipped two separate sets of FIA scales at 796.5kg — 1.5kg short of the required weight to be in compliance with F1’s technical regulations. As devastating as it was for F1’s latest race winner, there was no arguing with the facts and no grey areas to exploit, leaving Mercedes and Russell with no choice but to accept the disqualification.
“We have to take it on the chin,” team principal Toto Wolff said after the race. “We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it.
“We will go away, evaluate what happened and understand what went wrong. To lose a one-two is frustrating and we can only apologise to George, who drove such a strong race.”
In a social media post, Russell described the disqualification as “heartbreaking.”
In a sport where every last detail is accounted for, double checked and checked once more, it’s rare for a car to be found underweight after the chequered flag. It’s not unusual for teams to design a car to be as light as possible, but ballast is used to ensure it tips the scales at (or over) 798kg come what may after a race.
The last time it 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 tipping the scales short of the minimum weight, but Russell’s Mercedes crossed the line intact.
Mercedes will spend the coming days fully investigating the reason for the oversight, but initially it seemed linked to the remarkable one-stop strategy Russell used to take the victory.
By making a single set of hard compound tyres last 34 laps, Russell’s Mercedes…
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