George Russell has spoken out for the first time since his Belgian Grand Prix victory was handed to Lewis Hamilton. Russell, who crossed the line first, was subsequently disqualified from the race when his Mercedes was found to be marginally underweight.
Russell celebrated jubilantly after appearing to seal the third Grand Prix win of his career, having valiantly held off the charge of his team-mate, Hamilton, in the closing stages.
The post-race interviews and the podium celebrations had already been completed by the time news filtered through that Russell’s car was, in fact, slightly under the 798kg minimum weight requirement.
The top prize was consequently handed to Hamilton who, having gone two-and-a-half years without winning a Grand Prix, has now won two of the last three. Breaking his silence on being disqualified, Russell wrote on X: “Heartbreaking.
“We came in 1.5kg underweight and have been disqualified from the race. We left it all on the track today and I take pride in crossing the line first. There will be more to come.”
Hamilton, on fresher tyres than Russell, crossed the line half a second behind his team-mate despite spending the last three laps on his tail. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who has been bumped up to P2, was only 1.2 seconds behind the leader in third as Spa-Francorchamps hosted a gripping finish.
Russell’s misfortune also moved Ferrari star Charles Leclerc to the final podium spot after he crossed the line in fourth. On the shocking turn of events, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: “We have to take our disqualification on the chin.
“We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it. We will go away, evaluate what happened and understand what went wrong. To lose a 1-2 is frustrating and we can only apologise to George who drove such a strong race.
“Lewis was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner. There are many positives we can take from this weekend. We had a car that was the benchmark in today’s race across two different strategies. Only a few months ago, that would have been inconceivable.
“We head into the summer break having won three of the past four races. We will look to come back after shutdown rejuvenated and with the aim of maintaining our positive trajectory.”
