George Russell has been disqualified from the race for an underweight car
Yeah I'm scratching my head as to how this could happen. This isn't some 0.01 km/h over the pit speed limit "technically a penalty" type thing, 1.5kg is significant.
It has to be the new floor, now that I think of it. They had the new floor on Friday, but it preformed poorly so they switched back to the old on Saturday. Maybe the new floor is 1.5kg heavier, and George's side of the garage forgot to adjust the ballast accordingly after they switched back?
Only thing I can think of.
Weren't they both running the new floor? That would mean that they both should be underweight?
I suspect they mucked up the driver ballast, minimum driver weight is 80kg, so if you weigh less than that the team have to add ballast. I've heard that they got the ballast the wrong way round between the two cars and Lewis weighs more so his ballast is less...
For some reason I thought George was tall enough to weigh about 80kg on his own, but it seems not.
Nah he weighs noticeably less than Lewis as Lewis has always been pretty stacked for a F1 driver and Lewis put on muscle when the weight limit went up
Not particularly a fan of Russell, but that was an inspired drive, and deserved win....rules are rules though...
an inspired drive that was probably possible because of the underweight car. 1,5 kg is significant and might have enabled him do a 1-stop.
1.5kg, oof. That's more than the lap of picking up marbles would've given on other circuits. Just a mistake by the team. At least they pick up a win, but a blow to Russell and the team for sure.
Makes me wonder what the difference between a super used set of tires and a 30% used set of tires would be, though.
So this is on Mercedes for miscalculating the weight and a DSQ is only fair.
However, this whole tyre weight and marble pickup thing seems so silly:
You pick up a different amount of marbles depending on track length (or no in-lap like in Spa), rain can wash them away, if you do a long stint your tyres have less rubber left on them. Tyres are standardized, identical between all teams for the whole season and Pirelli knows exactly how much they weigh brand new. After the race FIA could just weigh the car without wheels. I'm assuming right now teams are leaving a slight weight margin, so they would be able to run even closer to the limit if they didn't have to worry about tyre weight.
The fact is several other drivers did a one stop without running into the weight issue and in the past, we have had drivers do almost the whole race distance on a set of tyres after switching to a hard after an early safety car(lap 2 or 3). Never in those cases has the car been underweight. This is a cock up by Mercedes and nobody else.
No word on the specific cause that I've seen, just the team acknowledged that they made an error according to the release from the stewards. I'm not insinuating anything but I have to wonder how that happened and if it was isolated to just George's car.
It sucks, a sour end to an otherwise brilliant day for him and the team.
Does anybody know how much weight the tyres lose during a long stint like Russel did? And when compared to a 20-lap?
OK I found it myself : https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/were-russells-worn-tyres-the-cause-of-his-spa-f1-disqualification/10640096/
“We expect that the loss of rubber from the one-stop was a contributing factor, and we'll work to understand how it happened.
“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.”
The missing weight of 1.5kg may sound like a lot, but we are only talking about 375 grammes from each corner.
And as Pirelli head of F1 Mario Isola has explained, that is well within the boundaries of how much a worn tyre loses.
Could this be a factor in why Russell was able to do a 1stopper when everyone else couldn't? Because his car simply was so much lighter?
Others did do a 1-stop. Alonso and Tsunoda I believe. They weren't underweight.
I don't think the issue is the tyres, I think it was a cockup from the garage.
It was a great drive by Russell and even bolder strategy call from him.
Mercedes fucked up big time. Now they have lost a lot of points and helped McLaren and Redbull get even further ahead in the standings.