Mercedes' George Russell has taken victory at the Belgian Grand Prix after a gutsy late switch to a single stop strategy. Lewis Hamilton finished a very close second while McLaren's Oscar Piastri ended up third, less than a second behind the Mercedes duo.
This is a car with shedded rubber trapped in the body work and on the wheels. The F1 pick-up weight is anyones guess at this point. But the lack of it would have been accounted for at Spa.
This is a car with shedded rubber trapped in the body work and on the wheels. The F1 pick-up weight is anyones guess at this point. But the lack of it would have been accounted for at Spa.
I'm not saying Mercedes didn't make a mistake. I'm just saying that the theory is still sound. Looking at the rubber pebbles left on the track in some races (and remember, that these are just the major visible ones, and doesn't account for rubber that sticks to the track), I'm pretty confident that an F1 car can shred somewhere between 5-7 kilograms of rubber of an entire race duration in dry weather conditions.
To my understanding, the FIA at the end only drained the fuel tank but not the collector because FIA didn't find it necessary to drain the collector itself . the car was already 1.5 kg underweight with the fuel tank drained. With the collector drained it would be more underweight. In 44 laps according to calculations 1.5 kg would amount to 2.6 seconds. That mean Lewis would catch Russel earlier. The main concern for me is that Mercedes didnt inform Lewis about Russel onestopping. Lewis was racing Piastri and Leclerc. He had tires left at both of his stints. Lewis would have pushed his tires more and when he pitted, he wouldnt be like 8 seconds behind. It would be a much smaller gap. With fresher tires and much better traction and lesser time gap, overtake would be achieved on the track. In the end Mercedes lost 18 points not 25. I dont accept that Russel became underweight because tires lost 1.5 kg. There are other cars who have one stopped and they were above the weight. Russell's car probably was underweight in the quali as well. Merc trying to leave some fuel in before the weight check results in the suspicion that they already knew about it
Hammy fans claiming the couple kilo underweight King George was the reason Hammy couldn’t get by is pathetic. Come on guys. You have more racing integrity than that. This is F1 Tech, not Planet F1. Smh.
Not-a-Lewis fan here. George just wouldn't have been in that position in the first place, to be fair. Lewis clearly drove a better race.
Why wouldn't George be in that position? He drove well, kept his tyres despite following cars for quite some time and defending from Max and then took the call go one stop! That to me was the driver of the day worthy performance. Lewis simply drove majority of the race in clean air, until the last few laps. How is that a better than George's performance? Lewis did better in Silverstone than this one.
Surely you are just trolling, aren't you? So Hamilton was magically dropped in clean air and didn't have to overtake cars to get there? I mean seriously what are you on about? Outqualified Russell in a heavier car, drove 3 sensible stints keeping his tyres alive and managing gaps to his competitors in each case, used as a mule in each case to cover off the other cars, rightfully so, but I guess that's not good enough for you. Russell drove brilliantly but for you to turn this into a bashing of Hamilton, when he clearly had the better weekend all round, tells me all I need to know.
Not-a-Lewis fan here. George just wouldn't have been in that position in the first place, to be fair. Lewis clearly drove a better race.
Why wouldn't George be in that position? He drove well, kept his tyres despite following cars for quite some time and defending from Max and then took the call go one stop! That to me was the driver of the day worthy performance. Lewis simply drove majority of the race in clean air, until the last few laps. How is that a better than George's performance? Lewis did better in Silverstone than this one.
Surely you are just trolling, aren't you? So Hamilton was magically dropped in clean air and didn't have to overtake cars to get there? I mean seriously what are you on about? Outqualified Russell in a heavier car, drove 3 sensible stints keeping his tyres alive and managing gaps to his competitors in each case, used as a mule in each case to cover off the other cars, rightfully so, but I guess that's not good enough for you. Russell drove brilliantly but for you to turn this into a bashing of Hamilton, when he clearly had the better weekend all round, tells me all I need to know.
Yes. I do think it was a very straight forward race for Lewis. He started on the inside line of Perez and jumped him with similar starts, pushed Perez wide like he usually does and then Perez backed off going into Eau Rogue. Imagine if it was Max going together to Eau Rogue. Ferrari was a slower car than Mercedes and he did a DRS pass on Charles. From them on, it's a race in the clean air. Adding more spice to make it sound like anything more is a valient attempt.
Why wouldn't George be in that position? He drove well, kept his tyres despite following cars for quite some time and defending from Max and then took the call go one stop! That to me was the driver of the day worthy performance. Lewis simply drove majority of the race in clean air, until the last few laps. How is that a better than George's performance? Lewis did better in Silverstone than this one.
Surely you are just trolling, aren't you? So Hamilton was magically dropped in clean air and didn't have to overtake cars to get there? I mean seriously what are you on about? Outqualified Russell in a heavier car, drove 3 sensible stints keeping his tyres alive and managing gaps to his competitors in each case, used as a mule in each case to cover off the other cars, rightfully so, but I guess that's not good enough for you. Russell drove brilliantly but for you to turn this into a bashing of Hamilton, when he clearly had the better weekend all round, tells me all I need to know.
Yes. I do think it was a very straight forward race for Lewis. He started on the inside line of Perez and jumped him with similar starts, pushed Perez wide like he usually does and then Perez backed off going into Eau Rogue. Imagine if it was Max going together to Eau Rogue. Ferrari was a slower car than Mercedes and he did a DRS pass on Charles. From them on, it's a race in the clean air. Adding more spice to make it sound like anything more is a valient attempt.
A terrible meal's been made out of it. George Russell was simply not supposed to be in a winning position to begin with. He was whalloped by his teammate in both qualifying and race. He had an absolutely dreadful time of it and only made his hail mary strategy call because he was utterly nowhere all weekend to begin with. He didn't - really - deserve to sniff the win that his teammate had already sealed up airtight against actual competition.
As it happens Mercedes shouldn't even have allowed him to run in first for that long. They didn't have the weight in the car to compensate for the loss of rubber from a one-stopping hard tyre. George Russell's entire victory was illusory, and his DSQ is the veil being lifted from that particular magic trick. Mercedes were marginal on weight because they expected, and planned, for a 2-stop. In other words, either GR runs a 1-stop and gets disqualified, scoring no points. Or he runs a 2-stop, and doesn't trouble the podium anyhow.
Or Mercedes plan for a 1-stop, they put the weight in the car for it...in which case Lewis Hamilton also gets the strategy, and he wins the race handily miles out in front and George doesn't sniff the victory either.
So no, I don't think he deserved to win. He's already gotten much much better press than he deserves all things considered, it's covered up his absolute howler of a weekend and the narrative will be more about how he was sadly cheated out of a win, and not about how he was whalloped by his teammate and was nowhere all race until he lucked into it.
It's funny that no one of the top teams will go on holiday fully happy:
- Mercedes: binned 25 points with amateur mistake, maybe even tried to cheat
18 points, not 25 (They lost P2, not P1).
And it's a dumb way to cheat when they know the cars will be weighed at the end. Don't suggest malice where simple incompetence is sufficient reason for messing up.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
It's curious how a car that passed a weight check after Qualifying is then underweight after the race.
Not sure they weigh the cars after qualy. They only randomly weigh some cars during qualy.
All of the top 10 cars were weighed after qualifying
In that case, the tyre theory is looking more and more likely to be the reason for the weight infringement. It seemed they knew something was up before the end of the race (based on Toto's countenance). If that's the case, it begs the question why not bring him in and put him on the softs for a late charge rather than take unnecessarily risk?
It's funny that no one of the top teams will go on holiday fully happy:
- Mercedes: binned 25 points with amateur mistake, maybe even tried to cheat
18 points, not 25 (They lost P2, not P1).
And it's a dumb way to cheat when they know the cars will be weighed at the end. Don't suggest malice where simple incompetence is sufficient reason for messing up.
They tried to hide it, that is sufficient reason to suggest it was malice.
Yes. I do think it was a very straight forward race for Lewis. He started on the inside line of Perez and jumped him with similar starts,
If they'd had similar starts, Perez wouldn't have been jumped. Hamilton got Perez off the line - Perez even did the cross-track chop move to try to keep Hamilton back but Hamilton was already level with him before he'd got across the track.
pushed Perez wide like he usually does
Left him width on the outside enough that Perez had enough room to have half of his car on the track - if he'd "pushed him wide" Perez would have driven in the gravel which he didn't.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
