Lewis Hamilton wins Belgian Grand Prix after teammate George Russell is disqualified

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS – Lewis Hamilton won his fifth Belgian Grand Prix on July 28, after initial race winner and Mercedes teammate George Russell was disqualified as his car was found to be underweight.

The car was found to be 1.5kg below the minimum weight required and all other drivers moved up one place in the classification.

“During the hearing, the team representatives confirmed that the measurement is correct and that all required procedures were performed correctly,” the governing FIA said in their release.

“The team also acknowledged that there were no mitigating circumstances and that it was a genuine error by the team.”

Sky Sports reported that one reason Russell was penalised was that his “one-stop strategy which saw him do 35 laps on one set of hard tyres were so worn out, that the rubber on his tyres meant he was under the limit”.

Said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner: “I’m sure he would have lost well over a kilo of rubber. We saw that on Friday.

“But you have to carry enough fuel to do the sample, or else you are using fuel as ballast. Really sad news for George but obviously a mistake in their calculations.”

Added Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff: “You have to take it on the chin. If the stewards decide against ourselves, a mistake has happened.

“A one-two would have been a great result going into the summer break, it couldn’t be any better. The positives from this race is we had two cars that were the benchmark with two different strategies and who could have said that a few months ago.”

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who won his first F1 race in Hungary a week earlier, finished second with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third.

Red Bull’s championship leader Max Verstappen moved up to fourth after starting 11th on the grid following a 10-place grid penalty for taking on a fifth engine.

Hamilton outfought Red Bull’s Sergio Perez at the start to move into second and took the lead on Lap 3, overtaking Leclerc on the Kemmel straight.

Russell started sixth on the grid and came in for his first pit stop on Lap 10 with Hamilton coming in two laps later but, while Hamilton came in again on Lap 27, Mercedes were happy for his teammate to stay out until the end.

Hamilton closed the gap in the final laps, but could not get close enough to overtake Russell and finished 0.526 seconds behind his teammate, before he was eventually disqualified.

Speaking before his teammate’s penalty, Hamilton said: “George wasn’t really in my race for most of it. And so if the strategy had been right, he wouldn’t have been in my race. So we wouldn’t have been having that, but it’s great that at the end we do have cars that are competing.”

Meanwhile, Piastri’s final pit stop, where he ran over his marks, cost him two precious seconds.

He said: “We didn’t quite have enough speed. It took me a couple laps to get past Charles and I overheated the tyres.

“Clearly the pace for George, staying out there on one set of hards was the right thing to do, but we didn’t have enough pace to mow him down and even Lewis, didn’t quite have enough.”

Three-time world champion Verstappen failed to win for the fourth straight race, the first time since 2020 that has happened.

Red Bull took the engine penalty, as they did the last two years at Spa, but this time Verstappen was unable to muscle his way through the field and missed out on winning in Belgium for a fourth successive season.

Lando Norris, second in the drivers’ championship, came in fifth for McLaren with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz sixth. Perez failed to take advantage of his start on the front row and finished seventh, but did post the fastest lap.

Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso was eighth with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, who will drive for Haas next season, finishing ninth. Daniel Ricciardo of RB rounded off the top 10. REUTERS