George Russell was aware he was “a little bit light” ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix he won on the road but lost to a post-race disqualification.
The Mercedes driver was stripped of the Spa victory he had secured with an audacious one-stop strategy to finish ahead of his team-mate and long-time leader Lewis Hamilton, after his car was found to be 1.5kg underweight – a strictly-punished breach of F1’s rules.
Over the 2024 summer break that followed Spa, Mercedes investigated its initial theory that the unexpected one-stopper had led to Russell’s tyres losing so much mass it left the car underweight overall.
The team has now concluded that a triple combination of factors was to blame, as revealed by Motorsport.com.
As well as the rubber loss and mass lost to the underfloor plank wearing on the Eau Rouge compression, Russell’s in-race weight loss in the hot Spa event was found to be a significant contributing factor in his total final weight post-race (car and driver weight are added together to form the final reading) being too low once the remaining fuel had been drained out from his W15.
As F1 reconvenes post-summer break at Zandvoort this weekend, Russell was asked if Mercedes now needed to take more margin on weight in light of what it had discovered – something the team could theoretically do by adding extra ballast.
But Russell’s response makes clear he feels instead there are ways to ensure meeting the weight requirements through new pre-race food fuelling strategies.
“I don’t think you need to take more margin; I think the processes weren’t quite in place to cover all the different scenarios,” said Russell.
“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.
“But there are things that now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can do better and we will be doing better moving forwards. As always, you need to make a mistake first [before] you recognise there’s a problem.”
Russell reflected on his feelings towards the disqualification now time has passed since he was initially “heartbroken” at the result.
“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.
“And of course it’s very frustrating that the one 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.
“And that race I lost 25 points, but I’ve kept my helmet and it’s going to be going on my bedside table with my other two victories.
“And those celebrations I had with the team straight after were some of the best feelings of my career. So, I’ll only take positives from what happened.”
