George Russell used an inspired 1-stop strategy to take an incredible victory at the Belgian Grand Prix. But shortly after the race he was disqualified after his car was found to be just 1.5kg underweight.
Here’s why that strategy may have been the cause of his downfall.
A large part of the Spa Francorchamps circuit had been resurfaced in the run-up to the Belgian Grand Prix. Practice sessions early in the weekend seemed to show that the new tarmac was causing high levels of tyre degradation.
That meant the slick tyres were wearing fast on the Belgian tarmac. And when the tyres wear out fast it means the drivers will have to do more pistops during the race on Sunday.
So come the Grand Prix all the front-running teams had planned two-stop strategies for their drivers. They’d each pit twice during the race and do three seperate stints on a combination of Medium or Hard tyres.
George's inspired strategy
As the 44 lap Belgian Grand Prix got underway the front running drivers decided to make their first pitstops between lap 10 and 15. George Russell was the first driver from the top-4 teams (Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari) to pit and he did so on lap 10, opting for the Hard compound tyres.
The second round of pitstops started on lap 25. But George Russell was feeling good on his hard tyres and suggested to his team that he would be up for ‘going long’. That meant he wanted to try a one-stop strategy which none of the teams had planned for.
The tyre degredation the teams had seen earlier in the weekend meant they’d all planned for two stops, but Russell was defying the odds and seemed to be making his Hard tyres last well.
George’s one and only pit stop took place on lap 10. That would mean going to the end of the Grand Prix on a set of tyres that, come the chequered flag, would be 34 laps old. And he have to try and keep the pace fast enough to take the win.
It seemed an insurmountable task, but George managed it. His pace did drop off towards the end, but he was fast enough to keep his teammate Hamilton behind him all the way to the chequered flag. An inspired mid-race decision to try the one-stop led to an incredible victory.
Disqualification
After the celebrations had finished, Mercedes were summoned to the stewards. The post-race technical inspection of George’s race winning car had found it to weigh 796.5kg which is 1.5kg below its required 798kg minimum weight.
The Stewards wrote:
“Car 63 was weighed on the FIA inside and outside scales with both scales showing the same result of 796.5 kg. The calibration of both scales was confirmed and witnessed by the competitor.”
The Stewards therefore deemed that Article 4.1 of the technical regulations had been breached and the standard penalty of disqualification needed to be applied.
As such, George Russell was heartbrakingly disqualified from the Belgian Grand Prix and stripped of his wonderful victory which was undoubtedly his best yet in F1.
George’s post on Instagram after the verdict showed his dissapointment, but that he and the team took great pride in crossing the line in first after an amazing drive:
Why was his car underweight?
After the punishment was applied, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said:
“We don’t yet understand why the car was underweight following the race but will investigate thoroughly to find the explanation.”
“We won’t be making any excuses though. It is clearly not good enough and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Mercedes accepted the penalty and admitted an error had been made, but weren’t clear what it was.
No chance to pick up marbles
Some theories have emerged. One of those is that the unique length of the Spa Francorchamps circuit might have been to blame.
At over 4 miles per lap, the circuit is too long for the cars to perform their usual cool down and celebration lap. Instead, after the first turn, they head in to the pitlane in the wrong direction and park up.
Not only does that mean the fans don’t get a wave from the drivers as they complete their cool down lap, it also means the drivers don’t have a chance to pick up any rubber.
Usually, after the race, the drivers will drive well off the racing line. They’ll drive over the ‘marbles’ (the loose chunks of rubber by the edges of the track) which, along with some smaller stones and gravel, their super hot and sticky tyres will pick up.
Image licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
This pickup can make a difference come the final weigh-in, as Pirelli’s head of F1 Mario Isola stated after the race:
“Considering that he is 1.5 kilos underweight, 1.5 kilos on four tyres is possible if you are just talking about the pickup,” he said. “If you have a lot of pickup, then for 1.5 kilos, it would be less than 400 grammes on each tyre. It’s a number that is possible.”
But the unique cool-down lap at the end of the Belgian GP is nothing new to Mercedes as it’s been that way for years. All drivers have to do it, not just the winner. So if they’d forgotten to think about that in their weight calculations then that’s a costly oversight.
Surprise 1-stop strategy
Instead, many think the suprise 1-stop strategy was to blame. Doing 34 laps on a single set of tyres means they’ll wear a huge amount a shed a chunk of weight in the process.
Andrew Shovlin said this may well have been the cause:
“We expect that the loss of rubber from the one-stop was a contributing factor, and we’ll work to understand how it happened.”
And when asked how much weight a single tyre can lose over the course of a stint, Pirelli’s Isola said:
“Usually, and we were talking about this a couple of days ago, it should be around one kilogramme.”
With the car being just 1.5kg underweight (that’s 375 grammes per corner) then it’s not hard to imagine that George’s 34 lap old tyres could have shed more than enough weight for him to fall under the limit.
Whilst 1-stop strategies are nothing new, at the Belgian Grand Prix George’s was unplanned. His Mercedes team had planned for a 2-stop, and their weight calculations would have accounted for the less-worn tyres that came with that strategy. The extra tyre wear from the single stop may well have caught them out.
As Pirelli’s Isola explains, it’s hard to be accurate in the tyre-wear weight loss calculations:
“Each track is different, each situation is different, and the wear is not linear,” explained Isola. “It depends how much you push, and it depends if your balance is perfect, because then you would wear all four tyres.”
Surely the fairest thing would be for weight limits to be without tyres/wheels.
Yeah it seems like it could make sense!
Thought, is it the total weight of car and driver or just car. As if the hydration/ water bottle is fixed to the car and full the car would well within weight, if empty, liquid consumed by driver under weight, driver carrying missing weight.
It’s car and driver combined, but good thought!
Not to put too fine a point on it… much of the fluid taken in is still included, even if it eventually soaks into the race suit as sweat or piss. There are very few routes for evaporation. It would be calculated along with fuel usage or lubricant burn.
Weigh cars before the race! Then underweight can be rectified before the start
Had the team suspected this issue could arise, what distance would it have taken to pick up sufficient marbles? In theory, could George have slowed immediately after the finish line and collected enough in the short distance to the pit exit? Or would it have taken much longer to gather some weight? Obviously even if the team was aware this could be an issue, they wouldn’t have known how bad it was, but how long does it take to pick up say 2kg (indeed, is that level of pickup even possible?)
I think it could have been done. He could have driven immediately off line, right around the edge of La Source and perhaps even ‘accidentally’ missed the entry to the pit lane to drive a little further along the track before turning back.