The disqualification of an on-the-road winner is a rare event in Formula 1. It happened for the sixth time on Sunday in the 1,115th round of the world championship.
George Russell was the unlucky driver to lose their victory. As on two of the other previous occasions this was for falling below the minimum weight limit, in his case by 1.5 kilograms.
Like Russell, Alain Prost lost a win when his car was found to be underweight. He fell 2kg shy after running out of fuel as he crossed the finishing line at the end of the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix. Three years earlier, Prost inherited victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix when original winner Nelson Piquet and second-placed Keke Rosberg were also disqualified for failing the minimum weight check.
Russell’s disqualification came 30 years to the race since the last time a driver was disqualified after winning. Michael Schumacher lost his Belgian Grand Prix win in 1994 when his car’s floor plank failed a post-race thickness check, under a rule introduced two races earlier.
The first driver to be disqualified after winning a race was James Hunt, who lost victory in the 1976 British Grand Prix for switching to his spare car before the race was restarted. Hunt had also been disqualified after winning the Spanish Grand Prix earlier that year, as his McLaren’s wing was judged to be too wide, but was later reinstated.
The only other driver to be disqualified after winning was Ayrton Senna’s controversial penalty in the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix. He was disqualified for rejoining the track via an escape road after tangling with team mate Alain Prost.
The following year Senna inherited victory in the Canadian Grand Prix from his team mate Gerhard Berger, who took the chequered flag first but received a one-minute penalty for jumping the start. Until last weekend, that was the only occasion a driver inherited a win from his team mate after they were penalised.
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Lewis Hamilton can now lay claim to the same. Not only that, he’s also inherited a win from a rival at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve due to a time penalty, in his case for Sebastian Vettel in 2019. He also previously lost a Belgian Grand Prix victory due to a penalty, in 2008.
Russell’s disqualification meant that instead of him winning the race by 0.526 seconds from his…
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