Mercedes’ George Russell said “nobody can take that feeling away from me” after his Belgian Grand Prix victory was stripped of him following a disqualification.
Russell executed a surprise one-stop strategy at Spa last month to lead a Mercedes one-two across the line, only for his car to be found 1.5kg underweight in post-race scrutineering.
A product of excessive tyre wear brought on by his inspired strategy call in the car, Russell’s underweight Mercedes saw him struck from the race result.
Regardless of the official stats, Russell is proud to have executed one of the best Grands Prix of his F1 career.
“It was such an amazing feeling, just being out there, seeing this opportunity come into life,” Russell told media including Motorsport Week during the Dutch GP driver press conference.
“And Spa is such a unique circuit. They’ve got these big, long straights. There’s a few TV screens down there.
“I was sort of looking at the leaderboard and the gap to Lewis, and I think Charles was behind Lewis at the time, and sort of working out, like, you know, they’re closing in six or seven tenths a lap, I’ve got 15, 16 laps to go and I’m 12 seconds or so ahead. I think I’ll be able to keep this up. And if they’re going to catch me, it’s going to be right towards the end.
“And yeah, that was such, you know, nobody can take that feeling away from me from crossing the line, celebrating with my team, standing on the podium.
“I think if I was in a championship fight this year, it would have been a much bigger blow to us, those 25 points. But, you know, this season, unfortunately, we’re not quite there.”
Russell said that multiple factors contributed to the disqualification and ultimately at the end of the day, Mercedes didn’t do a good enough job to ensure the car was legal.
“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, including myself,” he explained.
“You know, 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. And it’s just sort of these three or four factors all coming together that just pushed us over the edge.”
Still, Russell noted how he is encouraging Mercedes to “keep pushing boundaries” in its bid to attain race victories and made clear he’s employing a ‘no risk, no reward’ style strategy at the Brackley-based outfit.
“If you take margin in everything you do, you’d never be disqualified,” he reasoned.
“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, you know, 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 you know, there’s zero hard feelings because we’re in this together and it will make us stronger for the future.”
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