Blimey! Russell disqualified, loses incredible Belgian GP victory

Well, that was eventful wasn’t it? A race so unpredictable that even the chequered flag didn’t stop the drama. Poor George Russell, losing what would’ve been his third career F1 win after a post-race check found his car was 1.5kg underweight.

Doubly gutting because this wasn’t like Austria, where he was simply in the right place at the right time: this was a ballsy, tyre-whispering drive that wrestled away a win that for so long looked like it was destined for Lewis Hamilton. Ultimately, er, it was…

Anyhow, starting P6 on the grid Russell made up a place at the start after McLaren’s Lando Norris made his latest tiny-but-race-defining mistake by running into the gravel in Turn 1, after which George was locked into fifth place.

He stopped for hard tyres on lap 10 fully expecting to pit again later in the race, but on lap 26 he radioed his team to say: “Think about the one-stop.”

Two things were going in Russell’s favour: tyre degradation wasn’t as bad as had been feared, and overtaking was harder than expected. While everyone else in the top eight stuck to the two-stop, Russell rolled the dice.

Including his teammate. Hamilton had controlled the race beautifully from the start, muscling past Red Bull’s Sergio Perez before the first dash up to Eau Rouge and then cruising past Charles Leclerc two laps later.

He pitted earlier than the Ferrari on lap 11 - thus preventing the undercut - and his second stop was to defend against Leclerc again. From there he and Mercedes sounded more worried about Oscar Piastri, who had younger tyres and some serious pace after lunging past Leclerc into Les Combes. “Clean air is king,” he said over the radio.

He got that right. Although Russell was powerless to stop his teammate closing in, he was able to box clever, using what grip he had left on his 15-lap older hards to be quick through the final sector so that Hamilton never got a sniff of the lead despite having the DRS. In an almost identical situation to his first GP win in Sao Paulo in 2022, it was a masterclass. But even more impressive.

So why the DQ? After the race his car was found to be a kilo and a half under the minimum weight limit, which the team said was the result of ‘a genuine error’. No word yet on exactly what went wrong, but one theory is that the one-stop that earned Russell the win also cost him the race: staying out that much longer meant the rubber was worn down that much more, and with no post-flag in-lap (the drivers u-turn into the pits at Spa because the lap is so long), Russell had no time to pick up debris and add weight to his car. Oops.

Still, Russell has lots of positives to take into the summer break: his team is winning races again, it looks like he’ll be properly in the mix for the world title in 2025 and his seven-time champ teammate is departing… things are looking up for George, right?