Mercedes F1 team principal and CEO, Toto Wolff admitted the team made a mistake with its calculations that ultimately stripped George Russell of what had been a hard fought win around Spa-Francorchamps, as the Briton made an unusual one-stop strategy work to his favour to cross the line first, before being disqualified by having an underweight car.
The stewards’ verdict report that Russell’s car was one-and-a-half kilograms below the minimum required weight of 798kg, after the team removed a fuel sample for FIA tests.
As a result, Mercedes lost its 1-2 finish, but still won the race thanks to Lewis Hamilton finishing second on the road.
In a statement released shortly after the disqualification was confirmed, Wolff emphasized how the team made a mistake and has to take this tough moment “on the chin”, and apologized to Russell for costing him a second win of 2024:
“We have to take our disqualification on the chin. We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it,” said 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.
“Lewis is of course promoted to P1; he was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner.
“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.”
Despite the rough ending, it was an otherwise excellent weekend’s work from Mercedes, who managed to their fortunes around after losing around 0.9s in straight line speed in Friday’s practice sessions compared to McLaren and Red Bull, and suffering with bouncing issues.
Wolff pointed out that solid work from both the factory and trackside teams meant they “drastically” changed the set-up of the W15 going into Saturday, along with taking some of the new upgrades off in order to re-evaluate its effectiveness – but admitted they “didn’t see it coming” in the way of such a strong car on Sunday in Spa:
“On Friday, we were not competitive. But there was a clear direction of what it was. And honestly, I must admit that the overnight [work] that was done from Friday to Saturday, back in Brackley and also on the track engineering side, was the key.
“So we changed a lot for Saturday. But it was a mechanical alignment of what we thought the car would do.
“But we didn’t see [it coming], the pace today as it actually came in. The car was quicker [than we expected].
“We were in control of the race with the one-stop and with the two-stop. So that’s the very positive thing from the weekend.”
The Mercedes boss said Russell’s unorthodox strategy that would have given him victory if not for the technical infringement “wasn’t on the radar” and praised his driver for making it work when the computers were predicting a P5 finish, irrespective of a one- or a two-stop strategy:
“You can see that everybody else went on the two stops, logically. It just wasn’t on the radar. So what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do.
“We have these race planners that tell us where the car is going to come out at the end. And in a certain stage we saw we had to cut the loss at the end of the day. And we did it with Lewis [Hamilton]. So that was an absolutely clear cut [two-stop].
“And nobody expected the hard [tyre] to last. And [George] went on and on. And then at a certain stage, the race planners said P5 for George [either way], one-stopping or two-stops.
“But at the end, George made it survive the last [laps]. [It] couldn’t have been anticipated because it hadn’t been done by any of the other top teams.”
The strategy was so unexpectedly good that it brought somewhat of a problem for the team in the last few laps, as Lewis Hamilton – who had looked nailed on to win the race – raced towards his team-mate by almost seven tenths per lap, but couldn’t find a way through, which allowed McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to rapidly close in on the pair of them, which could put in jeopardy what was an almost certain 1-2.
Wolff admitted that if the race went on for another lap, a team order might have been issued to guarantee a Mercedes win, by letting the faster car at that stage to lead the charge:
“Probably if we had one more lap, that could have been a consideration. But I’m happy that we didn’t have to make that call.”
Nevertheless, Russell’s disqualification negated the team of a first 1-2 of the season, but the Austrian is taking comfort from Mercedes’ much-improved pace from the last few events that allowed them to win three of the last four races, and to finish with both cars at the head of the field on the road despite very contrasting strategies:
“A one-two would have been a great result going into the summer break. It wouldn’t go any better. The positive, very positive, that we can take from this race is that we have two cars that were the benchmark in this race, with two different strategies.
“Who would have said that a few months ago? And that is really good to see.”
