Mercedes believe George Russell’s car fell beneath the minimum weight limit because of higher than expected wear on his tyres and the plank underneath his car.
Russell lost victory in Sunday’s race when his W15 was found to be 1.5 kilograms below the legal minimum weight limit of 798kg. His team mate Lewis Hamilton inherited the win.
“At the start of the race the cars were the same weight,” said Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. They believe unexpectedly high wear levels in two areas meant Russell’s car ended the race lighter than expected.
“Obviously it’s very disappointing and unfortunate, particularly after he’d driven such a strong race to win from so far back,” Shovlin said in a video released by Mercedes. “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 drivers themselves can lose a lot and in this particular race George lost quite a bit of weight.
“Now, 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.”
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All cars have identical planks fitted to their underside which are measured for wear after the race. Planks are permitted to wear by no more than one millimetre during a race.
Mercedes fell foul of this rule last year, when Hamilton was disqualified after finishing second in the United States Grand Prix. Spa is a particularly challenging track to manage plank wear because of the compression as the cars pass through Eau Rouge at high speed.
The team also changed the specification of floor on both their cars at Spa after the first day of practice, which was dry. Saturday was wet but the track dried out before the race on Sunday.
Mercedes did no practice running on with hard tyre compound Russell used in his final stint, which covered almost three-quarters of the race. Russell switched to a one-stop strategy during the race, which the team did not plan before the race.
“We’ll collect all that data, look at how we can refine our processes because clearly we don’t want that to happen in the future,” Shovlin added.
Mercedes believe Russell’s car did not fall below the minimum weight limit until late in the race and it would only have provided a slight performance benefit. “In terms of pace at the start of the race, it’s nil [gain], because George’s car and Lewis’s car started the race at the same weight,” he said.
“Obviously, as George’s car was losing weight faster than Lewis’s throughout the race, there is an associated gain with that, but you’re into 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.”
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2024 Belgian Grand Prix
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