Wolff offers Russell disqualification theory after Spa heartbreak

Toto Wolff has offered an explanation for George Russell's shock disqualification at the Belgian Grand Prix. 

After one-stopping his way to victory at Spa, Russell's car was found to be 1.5kg underweight during routine post-race scrutineering checks by the FIA.

The matter was referred to the stewards with the verdict following shortly after, which confirmed Russell's exclusion from the results. 

Facing questions about the likely expunging of Russell's result, Wolff insisted there was "no excuse" as he offered a possible reason why Russell's W15 was underweight.

"I think with the one-stop, you expect a loss of rubber [from the tyre], but it is not an excuse," Wolff told media including RacingNews365. 

"If the stewards determine it to be a breach of the regulations, then it is what it is and we will have to learn from that as a team.

"There are positives today for George, but it is a massive blow for a driver to be challenging to win these races and I think it will probably be taken away, but he is going to win many more."

Russell disqualified from Belgian GP

Normally on an in-lap, drivers are told to pick up discarded rubber on their tyres to try and increase the weight, but at Spa, the traditional in-lap is curtailed.

Owing the 7.004km length of the circuit, cars are sent back up the pit-lane in the wrong direction into parc ferme, thus preventing the normal rubber pick-up. 

This, combined with the fact that Russell completed the race on a one-stop strategy with high tyre degradation, meant his tyres were well-worn at the chequered flag.

When this was put to Wolff, he said that he "couldn't comment", but that "it was clearly unexpected to run with one tyre [stop] throughout the race" with Pirelli having deemed two-stops the best strategy.