Mercedes driver George Russell was stripped of his brilliant race victory at last Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix after his car was found to be 1.5 lighter than what the sporting regulation determines.

Having lacked pace on the opening day of the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes driver George Russell had seemingly pulled off an unlikely win during last Sunday’s race at Spa-Francorchamps. The Briton started from P6 on the grid, and committed himself to a one-stop strategy to take his third F1 win.

However, after the chequered flag, Russell’s car was found to be underweight, with the stewards subsequently excluding him from the results – meaning team mate Lewis Hamilton took the win.

Although Russell had celebrated his well-earned victory at Spa, his victory was put in danger as it failed to reach the minimum weight during the post-race technical inspection.

FIA Technical Delegate Jo Bauer issued a statement at 17.50 local time last Sunday, claiming that the double weighing procedure showed that George Russell's W15 failed to reach the minimum weight of 798kg.

After passing the matter over to the stewards, the FIA held a hearing, and quickly came to the conclusion that Russell needed to be stripped of his third career win due to the technical infringement.

But how much did Russell really gain with his underweight car?

It is, of course, rather difficult to answer how much gain Russell secured with the underweight car as it depends on when he started to "enjoy" the benefit. You can assume that an additional weight of a single kilogram leads to a loss of 0.033 seconds per lap at the flowing, fast, challenging Spa track.

Had his car completed the entire race distance of 44 laps at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps underweight, he gained a total of 2.2 over the race distance.

Had his car completed only the second stint underweight, the gain was significantly smaller. After the race, it was supposed that the issue was down to his one-stop strategy.

He was believed to have lost over 1.5kg of rubber during his mammoth second stint that lasted 34 laps. With drivers diving back into the pit lane without completing a cool-down lap at Spa, he was unable to pick up the marbles which drivers usually do to make sure their cars reach the minimum weight.

However, it is only one possibility with Mercedes trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin claiming that Mercedes are yet to figure out the reason for the technical infringement.

"We don't yet understand why the car was underweight following the race but will investigate thoroughly to find the explanation. 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."

If his car was underweight only during the second stint due to the tyres, his total gain was around a tiny amount of 0.4 seconds during the entire race.

Although the time gain is minimal in both cases, the significant difference is that his team-mate Hamilton could have caught him earlier. In the first case, the seven-time world champion would have closed in on Russell three laps sooner while the second case would have seen him catch his younger team-mate a single lap sooner, providing him with additional overtaking opportunities.