George Russell disqualified from Belgian GP 

George Russell has been disqualified from the Belgian Grand Prix after his car was found to be underweight, resulting in Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton inheriting the win.

Jo Bauer, the FIA's technical delegate for Formula 1, reported Russell and his Mercedes team to the stewards after weighing his car. Russell's car was 1.5kg below the minimum requirement, causing him to lose his race win. Bauer's report stated:

"After the race, car number 63 was weighed and its weight was 798.0 kg, which is the minimum weight required by TR Article 4.1. After this, fuel was drained out of the car and 2.6 litres of fuel were removed. The car was not fully drained according to the draining procedure submitted by the team in their legality documents as TR Article 6.5.2 is fulfilled.

The car was weighed again on the FIA inside and outside scales and the weight was 796.5 kg. The calibration of the outside and inside scales were confirmed and witnessed by the competitor. As this is 1.5 kg below the minimum weight requested in TR 4.1, which also has to be respected at all times during the competition, I am referring this matter to the stewards for their consideration."

After about an hour, it was confirmed that Russell had been disqualified, allowing Hamilton to claim an unexpected victory. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff commented, "As a team, there are positives to take, but for George, it is a massive blow - a driver with childhood dreams of winning these races, and that has been taken away... A mistake has happened."

Russell believed he had achieved a stunning victory at Spa, starting the race in sixth position. The 26-year-old made the bold decision to pit only once during the 44-lap race, allowing him to overtake Hamilton, third-place Oscar Piastri, and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in fourth.

Leclerc had started on pole but was overtaken by Hamilton within two laps. The seven-time world champion seemed poised to score his second win in three races, having previously won at Spa four times.

While Hamilton and most other drivers opted for a two-stop strategy, Russell gambled by pitting only once, on lap 10. Despite Hamilton closing in, Russell managed to keep his car ahead, finishing just half a second ahead of his team-mate. Before the infraction on his car was discovered, this would have been the third win of his career. It took more than two hours after the race ended for the fuel mistake to be reported, allowing Russell to lift the first-place trophy on the podium.

"Amazing result, definitely didn’t predict this win this morning in our strategy meeting," he said before the mistake was found. "But the car was feeling really awesome and we made a lot of changes from Friday night and the tyres just felt great.

I just kept saying, ‘I think we can do the one-stop, I think we can do the one-stop,’ and the strategy did a really great job. Also, well done to Lewis because he really controlled that race and if circumstances were slightly different, I’m sure he’d have got the victory. But one-two for the team was such an awesome result and such a great way to go into the break.”