George Russell airs Charles Leclerc disqualification avoidance theory

George Russell has revealed that Mercedes believe Charles Leclerc's Ferrari was close to being "illegal", resulting in his dramatic pace loss to avoid disqualification from the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Leclerc started from pole position at the Hungaroring and led for the entire first stint of the race, before leading the vast majority of his second stint. 

However, everything unravelled in rapid fashion for the Ferrari driver after his final pit stop, where he was quickly caught and overtaken by Oscar Piastri and Russell. 

Leclerc had matched the McLarens for much of the race, before his pace was considerably slower in the closing laps. 

He furiously complained over the radio that the car was "undriveable", but quickly took back his comments in the media pen post-race. The Monegasque also received a five-second time penalty and a penalty point for erratic driving whilst battling Russell. 

Discussing Leclerc's drastic loss of speed in the closing stages, Russell revealed that Mercedes wonder if measures were taken to avoid an illegal level of plank wear. 

"Well, I saw how slow he was. I presumed something was not right," Russell told Sky F1.

"The only thing we [Mercedes] can think of is that they were running the car too low to the ground, and they had to increase the tyre pressures for the last stint.

"Because they were using an engine mode that was making the engine slower at the end of the straight, which is where you have the most amount of plank wear."

Russell fires Leclerc joke

Ferrari has endured plank wear issues already this season, with Lewis Hamilton having been disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix due to experiencing the problem.

In his own media pen, Leclerc explained that he had a chassis-based problem which he was not aware of during the race, something Fred Vasseur also confirmed. The FIA also cleared all cars following the post-race scrutineering checks.

Told that Leclerc said it was something chassis-related, Russell joked: "Yeah, he's not going to tell you that they're close to being illegal.

"That's the only thing we can think of, based upon the lap times and the engine mode they were running and stuff like that.

"But nevertheless, really pleased with the result. Strange weekend, when you look at, if you exclude McLaren, and you look at the the order of sort of P3 to P13 it's quite odd.

"You wouldn't expect Max to be so far down. Aston Martin had an amazing weekend. So we'll take the positive. We won't get carried away with it."