Mercedes reveal Hamilton and Russell car weight details as DSQ investigation begins

Mercedes have revealed that the cars of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were “within 500 grams” on weight at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix as an investigation into Russell’s disqualification begins.

Russell thought he had collected his third F1 victory in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, narrowly pipping Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to the chequered flag.

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However, Russell’s elation turned to heartbreak just hours later after he was excluded from the official results at Spa, with his car found to be 1.5 kilograms under the minimum weight limit during post-race scrutineering.

That gave Hamilton a record-extending 105th career win and his second in three races, having ended his extended victory drought at Silverstone earlier this month.

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, issued a statement after Russell’s disqualification was made official, apologising to the driver and admitting the team had “clearly made a mistake.”

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Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race Debrief show, trackside engineer director Andrew Shovlin revealed the team are still “trying to understand exactly what happened.”

And he made it clear that the cars of Hamilton and Russell “started the race the same weight” after their cars were weighed after the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon.

Shovlin said: “Obviously very disappointing and unfortunate, particularly after he had driven such a strong race to win from so far back.

“Right now we’re trying to understand exactly what happened. A lot of that involves us getting the weights of all the different components.

“The car can lose quite a lot of weight during the race – you get tyre wear, plank wear, brake wear, oil consumption, the driver themselves can lose a lot and in this particular race George lost quite a bit of weight.

“The cars started the race the same weight – Lewis and George were both weighed after qualifying, the cars were within 500 grams.

“George’s was the only one that had the problem and it’s because things like the tyre wear was much higher. It looks like we lost more material on the plank.

“We’ll collect all that data, though, and look at how we can refine our processes because clearly we don’t want that to happen in the future.”

Asked about the impact of Russell’s car being underweight, he added: “In terms of pace at the start of the race, it’s nil because George’s car and Lewis’s car start the race at the same weight.

“Obviously, as George’s car was losing weight faster than Lewis’s throughout the race, there is an associated game with that but you’re into the hundredths of a second per lap.

“It will be very small, because when you’re talking about amounts like one or two kilos, they don’t amount to a lot of lap time.

“But at the start of the race, the cars were the same weight.”

Russell’s choice of a one-stop strategy, and the absence of the usual ‘cooldown’ lap at Spa to allow drivers to add weight by driving over pieces of discarded tyre rubber, have both been cited as key factors in his exclusion.

Shovlin argued that Russell “did not have as much to lose” as team-mate Hamilton, having been on course to finish fourth at best until his decision to commit to an alternative strategy.

He said: “It was a decision that was taken by the strategy team.

“In Lewis’ case, it was a fairly simple decision to make his pit stop because he was leading the race and he had [Charles] Leclerc behind.

“Leclerc was not within undercut range, but when he stopped on fresh rubber, he would have undercut us if we had not brought Lewis in.

“When you are leading a race and the car in P2 stops, it is completely normal that you make sure you cover that because that is how you hold track position, and he was one of the significant threats.

“George did not have as much to lose. Had we stopped George at about that same point as we did Lewis, he was forecast to finish somewhere around fifth or sixth place.

“Maybe he would have got fourth, but we were expecting him to be able to get Sergio [Perez], but he was still in that same battle that he was in before with Max [Verstappen] and Lando [Norris].

“If we stayed out longer, that was what would then put George in contention for a podium position.

“He was very helpfully telling us that the tyres had stabilised, they did not feel like they were dropping, and he asked if we felt a one-stop would be on the cards.

“Based on the wear we had seen in the earlier stops and in Lewis’s middle stint, we could see that it was viable that you would be able to get to the end of the race with rubber.

“He obviously did a great job hanging on to them.

“It was not our plan on Sunday morning to do that strategy, but it was a good reaction by the strategy team and by George himself during the race to adapt to what we were seeing, the lower degradation, and capitalise on that.”

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