Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has accepted full responsibility for George Russell’s disqualification from the Belgian Grand Prix, after the team was found to have breached F1’s minimum car weight regulations.
A flawless drive and a bold one-stop strategy call by Russell himself sealed a thrilling battle with Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in favour of the younger charger at Spa.
However, shortly after the conclusion of the post-race podium celebrations, FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer referred Russell’s car to the stewards for potentially being underweight.
Further scrutineering and technical checks by the officials unfortunately confirmed the breach, which inevitably equated to a disqualification for Mercedes and Russell.
Wolff admitted that the team had made a mistake and that there were no excuses for the breach.
"If the stewards deem it to be a breach of regulations, then it was what it is,” commented the Mercedes team boss.
"We have to learn from that and as a team, there's more positives today obviously for George, but that's a massive blow to a driver whose childhood dream is to be winning these races that it's probably taken away.
"But he's gonna win many more."
The exclusion promoted teammate Lewis Hamilton to the top step of the podium, the seven-time world champion claiming his 105th career win in F1 as a consequence.
"We have to take our disqualification on the chin. We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it,” added Wolff.
"We will go away, evaluate what happened and understand what went wrong. To lose a 1-2 is frustrating and we can only apologise to George, who drove such a strong race.
©Mercedes
"Lewis is of course promoted to P1; he was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner," Wolff continued. "Despite the disqualification, there are many positives we can take from this weekend.
"We had a car that was the benchmark in today's race across two different strategies. Only a few months ago, that would have been inconceivable.
"We head into the summer break having won three of the past four races. We will look to come back after shutdown rejuvenated and with the aim of maintaining our positive trajectory."
On social media, Russell expressed his “heartbreaking” disappointment.
“Heartbreaking… We came in 1.5kg underweight and have been disqualified from the race,” he wrote.
“We left it all on the track today and I take pride in crossing the line first. There will be more to come.”
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