Mercedes suspects that wear to the plank on George Russell’s W15 contributed to his car coming in underweight and losing the win in Formula 1’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Russell executed an ambitious one-stop race at Spa-Francorchamps to pip team-mate Lewis Hamilton and head a Mercedes 1-2 in the last race prior to the shutdown.
However, post-race scrutineering checks found Russell’s car to weigh 1.5 kilograms below the FIA’s 798kg minimum weight limit, granting him an inevitable exclusion.
Mercedes admitted to a miscalculation as initial theories indicated that increased tyre wear with one less pit stop could’ve been enough to explain the missing deficit.
The marque has since doubled down on that suggestion, but initial observations have indicated that plank wear and even Russell’s own weight loss were also factors.
“It’s very disappointing and unfortunate, particularly after he’d driven such a strong race to win from so far back,” Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin said.
“Right now we’re trying to understand exactly what happened.
“A lot of that involves us getting the weights of all the different components. The car can lose quite a lot of weight during the race.
“You get tyre wear, plank wear, brake wear, oil consumption. The drivers themselves can lose a lot and in this particular race George lost quite a bit of weight.”
Shovlin has claimed that Mercedes had no reason to believe that such a situation could arise as both Russell and Hamilton’s cars weighed the same prior to the race.
“Now, the cars started the race the same weight,” he divulged. “Lewis and George were both weighed after qualifying, the cars were within 500 grams.
“George’s was the only one that had the problem and it’s because things like the tyre wear was much higher. It looks like we lost more material on the plank.”
“We’ll collect all that data, though, look at how we can refine our processes because clearly we don’t want that to happen in the future.”
Shovlin has also denied assertions in some quarters that Russell could have acquired a marked gain in lap time terms compared to Hamilton with a lighter machine.
“In terms of pace at the start of the race, it’s nil, because George’s car and Lewis’s car started the race at the same weight,” he explained.
“Obviously, as George’s car was losing weight faster than Lewis’s throughout the race, there is an associated gain with that, but you’re into hundredths of a second per lap.
“It will be very small because when you’re talking about amounts like one or two kilos, they don’t amount to a lot of lap time.”
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