George Russell says he still considers his Belgian Grand Prix as a “win” in his mind despite being disqualified after his car was found to be underweight.
The Mercedes driver took the chequered flag first in the last race before the summer break at Spa-Francorchamps, just ahead of team mate Lewis Hamilton and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.
Russell was the only leading driver to attempt a one-stop strategy in the race and successfully held off Hamilton in the final laps to claim victory. However, after the podium ceremony, Russell was disqualified from the final race results after his car was found to be 1.5 kilograms under the minimum weight of 798kg.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, Russell admitted Mercedes had underestimated how much weight both the car and he would lose over the course of the race distance.
“Clearly we didn’t do a good enough job, but it was just a number of factors all coming together where we, sort of exceeded our expectation of how much weight we would lose,” he said.
“Including myself – I lost a bit more weight during the race than we thought. The tyres lost a lot more than we expected. The plank was wearing more than we thought, as well. It’s just these three or four factors all coming together that just pushed us over the edge.”
Despite having lost a victory from being underweight, Russell insists Mercedes do not need to suddenly become more conservative in their approach to racing in the future.
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“I’ve been pushing the team for a long time to keep pushing the boundaries,” he said. “If you take margin in everything you do, you’d never be disqualified. You’d never make a mistake while driving. You’d never spin off. But you’d never know what the true potential is.
“Of course, it’s very frustrating that the one time in three years we’ve been just under the weight limit was the race we won. But there’s zero hard feelings because we’re in this together and it will make us stronger for the future.”
Russell says that the lessons learned from Spa will ensure that any similar situation does not occur again in future.
“The processes weren’t quite in place to cover all the different scenarios,” he explained.
“I knew before the race I was a little bit light, but it was too late to make a substantial change without eating a steak or something – which was probably not the best pre-race routine. There…
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