Mercedes trio of George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff reflect on pace shown in F1 Belgian GP despite the DQ for the initial race winner.
Nobody had any prediction for Mercedes to be 1-2 in F1 Belgian GP after the Friday and even Saturday they had. A podium was still a minimum expectation but a race win and that too in a 1-2 formation was the least expected outcome, even in their own calculations.
But Russell made it stick with a bold one-stop strategy and fended off well both Hamilton and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in the end. His lap times were not excellent by the end of it, but he had enough to score a win which he started believing in with 15 laps remaining.
He was wary of Hamilton and even Piastri to a certain extent. He was not sure about the strategy either, but he went along with his gut. The disqualification came an equal shock as the F1 grand prix win, as various reasons were speculated.
Mercedes did not that there were no mitigating circumstances, just that they made a mistake, but it isn’t clear what sort of mistake they made i.e if they started the race on the wrong weight, or it was the tyre strategy and or them not soaking in the tyre marbles.
The exact reason will not be known anytime soon, as Hamilton said his side of things where he was disappointed initially to miss out on the win. He felt he could have made the one-stop work too, if he had known, but Mercedes boss plays down that notion.
He stressed on Hamilton needing to cover couple of drivers which is why they needed to stop him when they did, while acknowledging that at that time, the one-stop wasn’t even though about. Wolff hailed the performances despite the eventual result.
Before DQ –
Race –
Russell: “Yeah, for sure. It was such a difficult race. We spoke so much this morning about the two-stop, the three-stop. But suddenly the tyres, the car felt really, really good. I got into this groove. And especially when I got into the lead, there were no back markers in front, no other cars in front. And it kind of felt like driving a simulator. It was quite weird. And I was looking at the gap to Lewis and the rate he was catching me. And I just thought there’s no reason why we can’t stay out here and do this one stop and try and make it work. So, yeah, super proud of the job we all did.”
Hamilton: “I think it was great. George did a fantastic job today. Obviously, I’ll re-watch the race but yeah, fantastic effort to go the one-stop. And it was pretty smooth sailing, to be honest. I was fully in control. I had plenty of pace and tyres and just didn’t end up as planned. Regarding radio comment about cockpit thing, I just had something as I was going through the corner. Something kept rolling underneath my left leg.”
Strategy –
Russell: “It was team effort. It was quite back and forth over the course of three laps. And I think it’s difficult because when you feel something in your gut, you have to go with it. But when every single driver and team is pitting to go on to a different alternative strategy, and after all the data we had on Friday suggested a one-stop was not even close to being viable, you do kind of question that a couple of times, thinking, ‘are we missing something here?’ Like, why isn’t anybody else doing this? But, you know, I just sort of felt at one with the tyres and I managed it a little bit at the beginning and I knew that would give me a bit of money back at the end. I think it’s a show, you know… we’ve got so many sensors and data points on the car, but there’s only 20 of us driving these F1 cars and sometimes you feel it.
“You can feel how the tyre is sliding over the track. And you’ve just got to trust your gut sometimes. I think it was about 15 laps ago, to be honest [when the win thought kicked in]. I think when Oscar pitted and Charles and Lewis, I was just watching the TV screens every lap, down after Eau Rouge, and just looking at the gap every single lap. And they just weren’t catching me as quick as I expected. And my lap times were just improving every single lap. And that was far from what we all anticipated. But it just goes to show how difficult it is to predict. I think every lap we were driving, 20 drivers, full gas around this circuit and it was just getting faster and faster. The grip was improving. And the tyres just felt really in a great state. But I was still questioning why nobody else did it. I thought, I must be missing something here because everybody’s peeling into the pits, but yeah, such a great race.”
Hamilton: “I mean, if you listen, you could have heard what I said to the team most of the time. But yeah, I think the tyres were pretty good. I still had plenty of tyres and I was going quicker. I didn’t want to stop. I just said that the tyres were fine. And I’m happy.
Fear of Hamilton catching –
Russell: “I definitely thought he was going to be very close. But equally, I recognise how difficult it is to overtake here. You know, we’re all running these skinny rear wings. The drag isn’t substantial. But I just want to acknowledge what a great race Lewis drove. You know, he was really controlling it at the beginning. And, you know, the strategy was such a difficult call for everybody. And it was definitely… That one stop was a real surprise. But I’m so proud of the team. One-two is just a huge result.”
Car transformation from Friday –
Russell: “It was a lot of things we changed in the car. We’ve got a lot of things we can play around with. I think we just had it in the wrong window on Friday. We obviously reversed on the floor because we just wanted to rule that out as well.”
Hamilton: “It was literally night and day different today. On Friday, it was pretty disastrous for both of us and really struggling with balance. And then today, the car came alive and I was really surprised to, firstly, get into the lead and then be pulling away from everyone and not… Yeah, as I said, it felt fully under control and I’ve not had that for years and so that’s why it was also a bit of a strange way to finish it. but it is it’s great to go into the into the summer break with the one two. the team did really deserve it and did such an amazing job.”
Wolff: “On Friday, we were not competitive, but there wasn’t a clear direction of what it was and obviously, I must admit that the overnight work was done from Friday to Saturday in Brackley the same, and also here on the track set engineering side was the key, so we changed a lot for Friday. But it was mechanical, not aligned with what we thought the car would do, so we remedied that, but we didn’t see the pace today as it actually came in. The car was quicker and we were in control of the race with the one-stop and the two-stop, so that’s the very positive from the weekend.
“As for George, we had these race planners that tell us where the car is going to come out at the end and at a certain stage, we saw we had to cover Norris and Leclerc, I believe with Lewis, so there was an absolutely clear cut and nobody expected the car to last and we went long and long and at a certain stage, the race planners said P5 for George in either case one-stopping or two-stops, so we said, well, let’s take the game and most drivers at that stage had the tyres, but with Lewis, we had to cover, so we extended the stint and the tyre remained absolutely fit in terms of performance until the very end.
Team effort –
Russell: “Yeah, I think it’s. You’ve clearly got to manage the tyres if you want to do something that’s so sort of off-piste. It goes hand in hand. It was great. The team sort of backed me up and put their faith in me to do the one-stop. And then obviously, you know, when you’re behind the wheel, you’ve got to deliver it and manage in certain corners, push in others. And also at the end, I knew Lewis was catching me, but I knew I needed to be quick in three corners, and that was the last two corners and the first one. I knew if I could save the tyres in the middle sector and nail it in those three corners, it would be very difficult for Lewis to pass into Turn 5. So, yeah, team effort.”
Situation with Russell (before DQ was official) –
Wolff: “We want to talk about winning the race, having two cars that controlled the race, well, it’s been reported to the steward that there is a weight discrepancy, we’ll see what the stewards will decide. I can’t comment because the stewards haven’t said their verdict. But, clearly, it was unexpected to run with one tyre throughout the race, so let’s see what they say. You have to take it on the chin and see what’s decided against ourselves. It is what it is. A mistake has happened and a one and 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 in two different strategies, that is really good to see. I think it’s a one-stop that you expect not to run but it’s not an excuse. We have to learn from that. As a team, there’s more positives to take as I said, obviously for George, that’s a massive blow for a driver. All his childhood dreams of winning these races and it is probably taken away.”
Team orders situation –
Wolff: “Well, I am not for team orders, but probably if we had won more, that could have been a consideration to take the P1 and George would have finished in P2 or P3. But I’m happy that we didn’t have to make this choice.”
Driver taking calls –
Wolff: “Yeah, I think we can pick out similar events where the driver can provide an idea of the race. There’s so much machines running in the background calculating time and pace of the others. That’s a bunch of really clever mathematicians and strategists that look at that. So in my opinion, nine out of ten times it’s the data that gives you the direction. You’re the one that needs to rely on the data. But a driver is important and what we encourage is great communication between the driver and the engineers to give better data to the strategists. And today, currently, at a certain stage, there’s nothing more to lose here. And then George asked, ‘if we can we make it a one-stop?’.”
Hamilton strategy –
Wolff: “It’s okay, but as a driver, you don’t have the full picture because he said his tyres are good. But at that stage, nobody had a one-stop on the radar. We had to cover the cars in time. I think it was Norris who did it. And we had to cover Piastri, to protect him. That is very unusual, yeah. We had to cover the two cars behind, was it Leclerc and Piastri? So we had to cover and you can see that everybody else went on the two-stop logically. It just wasn’t on the radar. So what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do. But at the end, George did survive. It couldn’t have been anticipated because if it would have been, any of the other top teams would have done it.”
After DQ –
Hamilton: “It is of course disappointing for the team to lose the 1-2 but there are lots of positives to take away from today. The car was feeling good, and we had much better pace than we expected. There were several cars that seemed similar in terms of performance but once we had got ahead, we were able to maintain that position. We committed to the two-stop strategy and covered those directly behind us.
“George was able to make the one-stop work and, although I got close to him in the final few laps, I was unable to get past in the dirty air. I feel for George, and you don’t want to win a race through a disqualification, but we have been back in the fight for victories in the past few races. It is incredibly competitive now, so we will need to work hard to battle for wins more consistently. Nevertheless, we can go into the summer break with momentum and positivity.”
Russell: “It is heartbreaking to be disqualified from today’s race. It had been an unbelievable Grand Prix for us to make the one-stop strategy work. In what turned out to be my final stint, the tyres just kept getting better and better. I was nursing them in the early stages and as we went further, I became more and more convinced we could get to the end on them. It was a risk worth taking and it looked like it had paid off.
“Despite the disqualification, I am of course proud to have crossed the line first. It is also good that the team was still able to take the victory with Lewis. He drove a great race and was the fastest car out there on the two-stop strategy. Whilst I’m incredibly disappointed, I know we will bounce back stronger after the summer break, starting in Zandvoort.”
Here’s Lewis Hamilton moving ahead of Charles Leclerc: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-hamilton-powers-past-leclerc-to-take-the-lead-at-spa.1805830020515450195
Here’s George Russell towards the end: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-watch-the-last-lap-in-full-as-russell-holds-off-hamilton-to-cross-the-line-in-p1.1805835481052533035
Here’s why George Russell was DQ’ed
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact