Toto Wolff says Mercedes has “no excuse” and “clearly made a mistake” that saw George Russell lose his Belgian GP win for a technical rule infringement.
Russell has been stripped of the win he took ahead of long-time race leader and Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton after Russell’s W15 was found to be 1.5kg underweight in post-race checks.
After the race, questions arose as to whether Russell’s winning one-stop strategy caused his car to become underweight.
Before the outcome of the Spa stewards’ investigation into the matter was announced, Wolff had said: “No, I think it’s a one-off test… you expect a lot of rubber, maybe more, but there’s no excuse.”
He had been answering a question asking whether there was anything Mercedes had known that could have caused Russell’s car to be underweight.
Wolff added: “If the stewards consider it was a violation of the regulations, then it is what it is.
“We have to learn from that and as a team there are obviously more positives for George today, but it’s a big blow for a driver whose childhood dream was to win these races and that’s probably been taken away from him.
“But he will win many more.”
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo credit: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
After Russell was disqualified for breaching Article 4.1 of F1’s technical rules regarding minimum car weight and Hamilton was promoted to victory, Mercedes issued a statement on Wolff’s behalf.
“We have to accept our disqualification,” the message said. “We have clearly made a mistake and we must make sure we learn from it.”
“We’ll go away, evaluate what happened and understand what went wrong. Missing a double is frustrating and we can only apologise to George, who had a very good race.
“Of course, Lewis moved up to P1; he was quickest in both stops and is a deserved winner.
“Despite the disqualification, there are many positive things we can take away from this weekend.
“We had a car that was the benchmark in today’s race with two different strategies. Just a few months ago, that would have been inconceivable.
“We’re heading into the summer break having won three of the last four races. We’ll try to come back from the break refreshed and with the aim of maintaining our positive trajectory.”
