How did the TV screens at Eau Rouge help Russell in his strategy?

Having lost a brilliant victory due to a technical infringement, Mercedes driver George Russell has revealed how trickside TV screens influenced him to opt for a single-stop strategy.

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

Before he was disqualified, George Russell pulled of a strategic masterstroke gambling on a one-stop strategy. The Briton said that he was not sure about how successful the one-stop strategy would be based on Friday's long run simulations, but he constantly monitored the TV screens to check how quick his rivals were on fresh tyres.

"I think it was about 15 laps ago, to be honest. I think when Oscar pitted and Charles and Lewis, I was just watching the TV screens every lap, down after Eau Rouge, and just looking at the gap every single lap.

"And they just weren't catching me as quick as I expected. And my lap times were just improving every single lap. And that was far from what we all anticipated. But it just goes to show how difficult it is to predict. I think every lap we were driving, 20 drivers, full gas around this circuit and it was just getting faster and faster.

"The grip was improving. And the tyres just felt really in a great state. But I was still questioning why nobody else did it. I thought, I must be missing something here because everybody's peeling into the pits, but yeah, such a great race.

Push on to explain why Mercedes have gone through performance swings, Russell revealed that the Brackley-based outfit still thinks that ambient temperatures have a huge impact on its competitiveness.

"I really need to look into it because this season's really been quite strange when we've been slightly off the pace in Austria and Barcelona. We didn't have the answers then.

"And when the pace was so exceptionally quick in Montreal and Silverstone, we had some ideas why it was quick but not to the magnitude that it was. So, for sure, we think there's some correlation with the temperature.

"It's obviously not the warmest here. There was a bit of cloud cover, so I think that is probably still the correlation we're seeing.