SPA, Belgium — Following a winning drive in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, George Russell has been disqualified from the event.
Russell’s Mercedes was found to be underweight after the event, which promoted teammate and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton to the top step of the podium.
According to a Technical Delegate’s Report, Russell’s car initially was compliant with the minimum weight of 798kg, 2.8 liters of fuel was then removed.
The report continued, stating, “The car was not fully drained according to the draining procedure submitted by the team in their legality documents as TR Article 6.5.2 is fulfilled.
“The car was weighed again on the FIA inside and outside scales and the weight was 796.5 kg. The calibration of the outside and inside scales was confirmed and witnessed by the competitor.
“As this is 1.5 kg below the minimum weight requested in TR Article 4.1, which also has to be respected at all times during the competition, I am referring this matter to the stewards for their consideration.”
The stewards then reviewed and disqualified Russell.
The news comes after Russell and his team elected for an alternate strategy, pitting one time on lap 10 in hopes of preserving his tires for the entirety of the 44-lap race.
It was originally a Mercedes sweep of the top two positions on the podium.
For Hamilton, it was his 105th career F-1 victory, and his second this season after winning the British Grand Prix.
“It is of course disappointing for the team to lose the 1-2 but there are lots of positives to take away from today,” Hamilton began.
“The car was feeling good, and we had much better pace than we expected. There were several cars that seemed similar in terms of performance but once we had got ahead, we were able to maintain that position. We committed to the two-stop strategy and covered those directly behind us. George was able to make the one-stop work and, although I got close to him in the final few laps, I was unable to get past in the dirty air.”
While Hamilton’s win wasn’t how he wanted to secure it, the British driver sees momentum within the team building as F-1 enters their annual summer break in the schedule.
“I feel for George, and you don’t want to win a race through a disqualification, but we have been back in the fight for victories in the past few races. It is incredibly competitive now, so we will need to work hard to battle for wins more consistently. Nevertheless, we can go into the summer break with momentum and positivity.”
Following his disqualification, Russell was heartbroken about the outcome.
“It had been an unbelievable grand prix for us to make the one-stop strategy work,” Russell said. “In what turned out to be my final stint, the tires just kept getting better and better.
“I was nursing them in the early stages and as we went further, I became more and more convinced we could get to the end on them. It was a risk worth taking and it looked like it had paid off.”
Russell won the Austrian Grand Prix earlier this season.
Last week’s Hungarian Grand Prix winner, Oscar Piastri, scored McLaren valuable points with a runner-up result.
Leclerc dropped to third by race’s end while championship leader Max Verstappen placed fourth after serving a 10-place grid penalty due to a power unit change.
“All in all it was quite a positive day for me, considering we started at P11, and we finished in front of Lando (Norris) who is my main rival in the championship,” Verstappen said. “I think we did everything right with the strategy today and I had a good clean start. I was in the DRS train and it was difficult to pass, but I think strategy wise we did everything that we could to the limit. It was tough to make it with two mediums and a hard tire and we could potentially have taken more position if we started with the hard tire, but I think we did a good job and maximized our result today.
“It wasn’t realistic to start P11 and fly to the front, so I am overall happy with our performance. We are looking forward to the summer break and having a bit of time to relax, but at the same time we are committed to being better and faster and are trying to find solutions as we go into the rest of the season. However, everyone has been doing a great job and will have a well deserved break. We had a great start to the season, our last few races have been a bit more difficult, but we have been pushing to find a solution how to do that.”
Lando Norris finished one position behind Verstappen in fifth. The McLaren driver was followed by Carlos Sainz in sixth place. Sergio Perez finished seventh after Sainz passed the Red Bull driver in the final stages.
Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon and Daniel Ricciardo completed the top 10.
Haas F-1 endured a rough showing at Spa-Francorchamps as Kevin Magnussen placed 14th and teammate Nico Hulkenberg was the final finisher in 18th.
American Logan Sargeant finished 17th for Williams Racing.