Mercedes detail impact of Russell underweight advantage

Mercedes has revealed the impact George Russell's underweight W15 will have carried through the Belgian Grand Prix.

Russell and Mercedes conjured a superb one-stop strategy around the Spa-Francorchamps circuit that allowed him to take the chequered flag at the end of the 44 laps.

The Briton, however, was later disqualified as his car was discovered to be 1.5 kilograms underweight after the requisite fuel was removed for a sample. Team-mate Lewis Hamilton inherited the win after initially finishing runner-up.

Mercedes has been conducting an internal investigation as to why the situation occurred, with trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin revealing that some of the findings include Russell personally losing a considerable amount of weight during the race.

As to the actual advantage gained by Russell over the course of the event, Shovlin said: "In terms of pace at the start of the race it is nil because George's car and Lewis' car start the race at the same weight.

"Obviously, as George's car was losing weight faster than Lewis' throughout the race, there is an associated gain with that, but you are into the hundredths of a second per lap.

"It will be very small because when you are talking about amounts like one or two kilos, they do not amount to a lot of lap time. But as I said, at the start of the race the cars were the same weight."

Shovlin has conceded to the team experiencing "a bittersweet moment" as a one-two finish turned into a disqualification for Russell albeit still able to celebrate Hamilton's 105th career triumph, particularly after Mercedes reverted to its Silverstone specification after fresh upgrades did not work during Friday practice.

"It was a fantastic finish to the race," said Shovlin. "To get the cars home one-two was a real achievement, particularly because we had had such a difficult Friday.

"But overall, aside from the disappointment, the team is really encouraged by the performance. It was a great turnaround by the engineering team to get the car sorted out to perform so well in the race.

"It was also encouraging for us as hot circuits have not been our strength this year. The track was pretty hot there in Belgium and we were able to perform really well, particularly on the long run.

"George obviously did one of the longest stints of anyone. Plenty of positives for sure, and just a shame that we could not keep the result."