It wasn’t just the increased tire consumption for the race that ended with just one pit stop by George Russell. Mercedes hasn’t filed away the disqualification of the English driver who won the Belgian GP as a fluke, but the Brackley staff wants to get to the bottom of it to identify all the causes that led to George’s exclusion after the post-race checks.
Andrew Shovlin, head of track engineering, suspects that the missing 1.5 kg mass recorded by the FIA technical commissioners is due to the wear of various parts of the W15: Mercedes has monitored the wear of the pad under the chassis (1 mm of wear on 10 mm of thickness is permitted), that of the tyres, as well as a loss of weight by George Russell.
George Russell during the only pit stop in the Belgian GP
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The regulation states that the single-seater at all times during the event must have a minimum weight of 798 kg and the driver’s mass is also included in the calculation (which is why he is weighed regularly before and after the race.
Initial analyses conducted by Mercedes have not identified a single factor as the cause of the problem, so much so that the star manufacturer continues to measure all the components of the car to try to understand why it ended up below the minimum regulatory threshold.
Initial suspicions revolved around the likelihood that Russell’s tyres had worn out more, as the Englishman had completed 48 laps on hard tyres to complete the GP with just one pit stop, while Hamilton finished the race with an 18-lap stint on white tyres.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
By convention, the consumption of 1 kg of rubber is calculated during a stint, so it is possible that there was greater wear on the more used tyres, compared to a fresher set that Russell would have used if he had stuck to the two stops. According to the calculations made by Pirelli, there could be a greater consumption estimated at around 375 g for each tyre and, therefore, this would explain the irregularity that emerged in the weight.
In the video Mercedes released of the Spa race debriefing, Andrew Shovlin hinted that other factors were also at play, which the team is now investigating.
“Right now, we are trying to understand exactly what happened. We are basically checking the weight of all the components. The car loses a lot of weight during the race. You check the tire wear, the brake wear, the pad wear, and the oil consumption. And the driver himself can lose a lot of fluids if it is hot. I can say that on Sunday George lost a lot of weight.”
Shovlin explained that there were no warnings of a potential critical situation: the two drivers were weighed before the GP and their masses were almost identical to those recorded on Saturday after qualifying.
“The cars started the race with the same weight,” Shovlin added. “Lewis and George were both weighed after qualifying. The difference between the cars was within 500 grams. Only George’s W15 had the problem and it was legitimate to think that the underweight was due to excessive tyre wear, but we recorded an unexpected wear on the board.”
“We will collect all the data, to refine our processes, because we do not want this episode to repeat itself in the future.”
It is legitimate to ask whether there was a performance advantage: in F1 it is estimated that 10 kg can be worth about 0”3. Russell’s theoretical gain, however, would have occurred only in the final phase of the race because the two Mercedes started with the same weight.
“Since George’s car was losing more weight than Lewis’ during the race, there must have been an advantage, but it was only a few hundredths of a second per lap.”
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