This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at the legendary Spa Francorchamps, loathe as I am to admit it, was a pretty damn good Formula 1 race. George Russell went extremely long on a set of hard tires, running a one-stop strategy that nobody thought was viable, and it paid off (until it didn’t.) No single driver, or indeed team, was head-and-shoulders above the competition like in basically every other race this year. Belgium was the best race of the season, by a long shot. Until George Russell received a disqualification caused by that very same strategy. Hoist with his own petard, as it were.
Many factors play into Russell’s DSQ. At the close of the race his car was found to be 1.5 kilograms under the minimum weight allowed by the F1 rulebook. 1.5 kilograms is 3.306 pounds, which is not insignificant in a Formula 1 car. That’s more or less half a gallon of gasoline. It’s about half of what a driver loses in sweat during the course of a race. According to Pirelli boss, Mario Isola, each tire loses almost one kilogram of weight due to wear over the course of an F1 Grand Prix.
There are some who would say that Russell’s 1.5 kilo underweight status contributed to his race victory, allowing his tires to last significantly longer than anyone else, and providing a pace advantage over his rivals. While three pounds is significant in the context of an F1 race car, it’s hardly going to be the winning factor. But the rules are the rules, and Russell’s race was rightly thrown out for it.
F1 competitors are always looking for different ways to play the rulebook to their advantage, and everything is a game of margins. The team will have to factor in how much a car and driver weigh at the end of a grand prix to determine how light they can build their car in the first place. Sometimes those calculations are off by a percent or two, so they’ll build in some margin in order to hit the right weight. Considering both Yuki Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso made a one-stop strategy work (admittedly neither were quite as long on their tires as Russell) on Sunday, and neither of them were under weight after the race, perhaps Mercedes just ran the numbers wrong and flew a little too close to the sun.
Weight is also why racers drive off-line on the cooldown lap in order to pick up some extra rubber “marbles” to add to the car’s post-race weight. Because Spa Francorchamps is the longest lap of any in the F1 calendar, drivers don’t get a full cooldown lap, and thus no opportunity to pick up tire detritus. This is one part of Russell’s issues, and if he’d been allowed a cooldown lap, might have actually been able to pick up enough junk to be legal weight and keep his race win. Mercedes, however, knows that there’s no cooldown lap at Spa, and would have factored that in.
If a tire can lose a full kilogram during the course of a normal stint, George Russell’s mega 34-lap stint on his Pirelli Hards on Sunday would certainly have contributed to that wear rate. Consider also that this race went its full distance without a safety car, virtual or material, meaning that Russell (and everyone else) would have burned quite a bit more fuel than if the racing had paused for a few laps. With Teammate Lewis Hamilton and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri hot on his tail, Russell had to spend his entire 34 laps on hard tires pushing as hard as possible, meaning he likely burned even more fuel and wore more material from his tires than Mercedes had calculated for. It’s hardly an exact science.
There’s no way to Monday Quarterback George into keeping his victory, because all of these factors add up to a car that is under weight by a little over 3 pounds. It was a damn fine effort, though.