Mercedes-AMG Petronas F-1 Team has been on the up-and-up recently.
With both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell scoring victories earlier in the season, there was a lot of momentum on the team’s side.
However, perhaps the team’s peak performance on the season came in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, where a one-stop strategy from Russell’s team led to victory at Spa-Francorchamps.
He led a Mercedes one-two finish with Hamilton in second.
However, the team’s successful day will be overlooked following Russell’s disqualification after the race.
Russell’s race car was found to be underweight, which in turn, forced the stewards to disqualify the British driver.
Following the news, Mercedes’ Team Principal and CEO, Toto Wolff, confirmed the team made a mistake with Russell’s race car and they will accept the penalty.
“We have to take our disqualification on the chin,” Wolff said. “We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it. We will go away, evaluate what happened and understand what went wrong.
“To lose a 1-2 is frustrating and we can only apologize to George who drove such a strong race. Lewis is of course promoted to P1; he was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner.”
While Wolff was disappointed by the team’s loss of a 1-2 finish, he still sees plenty of positives with Hamilton scoring his second win of the season and the 105th of his illustrious career.
“Despite the disqualification, there are many positives we can take from this weekend,” Wolff said. “We had a car that was the benchmark in today’s race across two different strategies.
“Only a few months ago, that would have been inconceivable. We head into the summer break having won three of the past four races. We will look to come back after shutdown rejuvenated and with the aim of maintaining our positive trajectory.”