The forgotten fact about George Russell’s disqualification
Confirmed by Andrew Shovlin, George Russell was disqualified at the last Grand Prix mainly because of excessive tire wear. According to Mercedes' technical director, the Briton also lost a lot of weight during the race, which contributed to his disqualification.
A few days ago, Motors Inside shared with you the potential reasons for George Russell’s disqualification during the last Grand Prix. Excessive tire wear and the lack of a deceleration lap, usually used by drivers to pick up debris and weigh down the tires at the end of the race, were to blame.
These pieces of information, originally unconfirmed by Mercedes, have now been validated by Andrew Shovlin, the team’s technical director. The engineer specified that George Russell’s car suffered from much more significant tire wear than Lewis Hamilton’s, resulting in a significant loss of material on the floor.
A series of misfortunes
The two Mercedes that started the race with the same weight, however, finished the race with very different results. « The cars started the race at the same weight. Lewis and George were weighed after qualifying, with cars weighing 500 grams difference », admitted Andrew Shovlin to the media. « George is the only one who encountered this issue, largely due to significantly higher tire wear. It seems that we lost more material on the floor. »
These assumptions, which already seemed obvious based on the photos collected during the Grand Prix, went far beyond the car. As a reminder, George Russell had completed a Grand Prix with only one pit stop. The tires were therefore much lighter than those of his teammate. Therefore, they were much more affected by the asphalt of the track. It is estimated that George Russell’s tires lost 4 kg more than those of Lewis Hamilton on this strategy.
Despite everything, the disqualification of the young Briton also seems to be the result of a series of misfortunes. It is obviously very disappointing and unfortunate, especially after he has made such a strong race to come back from so far, Shovlin acknowledged. We are currently trying to understand exactly what happened. Much of this involves weighing the different components, and the car can lose a lot of weight during the race. There’s tire wear, floor wear, brake wear, oil consumption, and even the driver himself can lose a lot of weight. And during this particular race, George lost quite a bit of weight, Shovlin finally admits.
With the information provided by the technical director, it seems that the weight lost by the British driver also played a role in the balance. The exact weight lost by Russell has not yet been communicated, but in general, drivers can lose up to 4 or 5 kg per race. This weight loss, combined with that of the car components, brought Russell’s car below the mandatory minimum weight of 1.5 kg.
