Russell reveals known issue prior to Belgian GP disqualification

George Russell has admitted he knew he was underweight prior to the Belgian Grand Prix, which he was ultimately disqualified from.

The British driver won the race at Spa-Francorchamps, but was subsequently stripped of that victory when he and his car were found 1.5kg shy of the required post-race weight limit.

It had been previously confirmed by Mercedes that a number of factors contributed to falling foul of the 798kg marker, including Russell losing more weight than normal during the grand prix.

The 26-year-old has now confirmed that he was lighter than usual prior to the race starting, which further exacerbated the issue.

However, he also highlighted the Brackley-based team had not been rigorous enough with exhausting all potential scenarios - something he believes will be less of an issue moving forward.

"I knew before the race I was a little bit light, but it was too late to make a substantial change without eating a steak or something, which is probably not the best pre-race routine," he explained to media including RacingNews365.

"The processes weren't quite in place to cover all different scenarios... there are things that, with the benefit of hindsight, we can do better, and we will be doing better moving forward.

"And, as always, you need to make a mistake first until you recognise there's a problem."

'We didn't do a good enough job...'

As for the other contributing factors, Russell reiterated the "three of four factors" that accumulatively contributed to his disqualification.

To further accentuate the issues for Mercedes on the day, the two-time grand prix winner pushed for an aggressive and unplanned one-stop strategy.

That decision ultimately allowed Russell to cross the line first, but his thread-bare tyres were also lighter than the team could have forecast, given a two-stopper was the prevailing and expected approach at Spa-Francorchamps.

"Clearly we didn't do a good enough job, but it was just a number of factors all coming together where we sort of exceeded our expectation of how much weight we would lose, including myself," Russell contended.

"I lost a bit more weight during the race than we thought. The tyres lost a lot more than we expected. The plank was wearing more than we thought as well.

"And it's just sort of these three or four factors all coming together that just pushed us over the edge."