George Russell remains resolute in his belief that he was the true victor of last month’s Belgian Grand Prix, despite being disqualified after his Mercedes was found to be underweight by 1.5 kilograms.
The disqualification stripped the Briton of what would have been his third career win in F1, but in Russell's mind, the victory still stands.
The Mercedes driver believes he and his team gave their all and that the disqualification was a result of minor factors that ultimately cost them the win.
He cited his own weight loss during the race, tyre degradation, and plank wear as contributing deficits to the underweight car.
“Clearly we didn’t do a good enough job, but it was just a number of factors all coming together where we sort of exceeded our expectation of how much weight we would lose,” Russell explained, speaking in Zandvoort ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.
“Including myself – I lost a bit more weight during the race than we thought. The tyres lost a lot more than we expected. The plank was wearing more than we thought, as well. It’s just these three or four factors all coming together that just pushed us over the edge.”
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Despite the setback, Russell remains committed to pushing the limits, rather than taking a more conservative approach in future races.
“I’ve been pushing the team for a long time to keep pushing the boundaries,” he said.
“If you take margin in everything you do, you’d never be disqualified. You’d never make a mistake while driving. You’d never spin off. But you’d never know what the true potential is.
“Of course, it’s very frustrating that the one time in three years we’ve been just under the weight limit was the race we won.
“But there’s zero hard feelings because we’re in this together and it will make us stronger for the future.”
Indeed, Russell emphasized that Mercedes has learned valuable lessons from its Spa oversight which will help prevent a similar situation in the future.
“The processes weren’t quite in place to cover all the different scenarios,” he admitted. “I knew before the race I was a little bit light, but it was too late to make a substantial change without eating a steak or something – which was probably not the best pre-race routine."
“There are things that now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can do better and we will be doing better moving forward. And as always, you need to make a mistake first until you recognise there’s a problem.”
Despite losing the official victory, Russell remains proud of his performance at Spa and holds onto the memory as a personal triumph.
“That race, I lost 25 points, but in my mind, that is still a win,” he said.
“I’ve kept my helmet and it’s going to be on my bedside table with my other two victories. Those celebrations I had with the team in that moment, straight after, were some of the best feelings of my career. So I’ll only take positives from what happened.”
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