George Russell’s Belgian GP DSQ ‘still a win’ with admission over underweight car

George Russell says that he’s hanging onto all the positive feelings of one of the strongest races of his career despite his disqualification from the F1 2024 Belgian GP.

The British driver claimed his third career victory at the Belgian GP at Spa, only to lose the win a few hours later as his Mercedes W15 was found to be 1.5 kilogrammes below the minimum weight permitted.

George Russell explains factors behind Belgian GP disqualification

Additional reporting by Sam Cooper

Russell’s disqualification came just after he’d produced one of the strongest races of his career, in which he had gone against the grain of most using the two-stop strategy in order to eke out his tyres to make a one-stop strategy work.

With tyre degradation proving less harsh than had been expected, Russell managed to massage his car home while still in the lead, weathering some late-race pressure as Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri bore down rapidly on much fresher tyres.

But while Hamilton and Piastri lined up behind in the final laps, Russell held them off sufficiently to get across the line to win – only to lose the win due to the slightly underweight car, a symptom of several factors as Russell explained on Thursday at Zandvoort.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com , when asked about whether he was confident Mercedes had addressed the issues which led to his disqualification.

“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, 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, and it’s just these three or four factors all coming together and they just pushed us over the edge.”

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But this took nothing away from what he felt had been his best race ever in Formula 1, having made the call to make it to the chequered flag on his second set of tyres and then soaking up the pressure.

“Without a doubt. It was such an amazing feeling just being out there and seeing this opportunity come to life,” he said.

“Spa is such a unique circuit, it’s got these big, long straights and there are a few TV screens down there. I was looking at the leaderboard and the gap to Lewis – I think Charles [Leclerc] was behind Lewis at the time – and working out, they’re closing in six or seven tenths a lap, I’ve got 15-16 laps to go and I’m 12 seconds or so ahead, ‘I think I’ll be able to keep this up and, if they’re going to catch me, it’s going to be right towards the end.’

“Nobody can take that feeling away from me, from crossing the line, celebrating with my team, and standing on the podium.

“I think, if I was in a championship fight this year, it would have been a much bigger blow to us, those 25 points. But, this season, unfortunately, we’re not quite there.”

But despite the error in judgement – which only occurred on his side of the garage as Hamilton moved up from second to take the victory – Russell said he wouldn’t be urging more caution from his team.

“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’ll never be disqualified, you’ll never make a mistake while driving and you’ll 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 are zero hard feelings, because we’re in this together, and it will make us stronger for the future. That race, I lost 25 points, but, in my mind, that is still a win.

“I’ve kept my helmet and it’s going to be going on my bedside table with my other two victories. Those celebrations I had with the team in that moment, straight afterward, are some of the best feelings of my career. So I’ll only take positives from what happened.

“I don’t think you need to take more margin. Processes weren’t quite in place to cover all the different scenarios. I knew before the race I was a little bit light, but it was too late to make substantial change without eating a steak or something, which is 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 forward. As always, you need to make a mistake first, until you recognise there’s a problem.”

With Mercedes having won three of the four races leading into the summer break, even with Russell’s disqualification, the British driver said he believes the battle for top spot as the fastest team in F1 is only heating up.

“I think definitely ourselves and McLaren have moved forward and, when you look at the gap to the teams lower down the order, that is definitely very clear,” he said.

“So I don’t necessarily think Red Bull have made a small step backwards with the upgrade they’ve brought, but I think the upgrade we have been bringing to the car was a bigger step forward than we’ve seen on any other team.

“So let’s see what the next upgrades bring, and hopefully, it’s more of the same.”

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