No excuses for “mistake” that got Russell disqualified from Belgian GP

Toto Wolff says Mercedes has “no excuse” and “clearly made a mistake” that lost George Russell his Belgian GP victory in a technical rules breach.

Russell has been stripped of the victory he took ahead of long-time race leader and his Mercedes team-mate, Lewis Hamilton after Russell’s W15 was found to be 1.5kg underweight in post-race checks.

After the race, questions were posed over whether the winning one-stop strategy led to Russell’s car being underweight.

Speaking before the outcome of the Spa stewards’ investigation into the matter was announced, Wolff had said: “No, I think it’s a one-stop that … you expect lots of rubber, maybe more, but there’s no excuse”.

He had been responding to a question that asked if there was anything Mercedes had been aware of that could have caused Russell’s car to underweight.

Wolff then added: “If the stewards deem it to be a breach of regulations, then it was what it is.

“We have to learn from that and as a team, there’s more positives today obviously for George, but that’s a massive blow to a driver whose childhood dream is to be winning these races that it’s probably taken away.

“But he’s gonna win many more.”

George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Once Russell had been disqualified for breaching Article 4.1 of F1’s technical rules regarding minimum car weight and Hamilton was promoted to the win, Mercedes released a statement on Wolff’s behalf.

“We have to take our disqualification on the chin,” this read. “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 1-2 is frustrating and we can only apologise to George, who drove such a strong race.

“Lewis is of course promoted to P1; he was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner.

“Despite the disqualification, there are many positives we can take from this weekend.

“We had a car that was the benchmark in today’s race across two different strategies. Only a few months ago, that would have been inconceivable.

“We head into the summer break having won three of the past four races. We will look to come back after shutdown rejuvenated and with the aim of maintaining our positive trajectory.”