The drama does not seem to end in the 2024 season as George Russell has seen his outstanding victory in Spa slip away from his hands due to his car being underweight. The FIA announced this verdict minutes ago. This means that Lewis Hamilton will inherit the Belgian GP win, while Russell will not score any points. Since Hamilton had finished second before the FIA delivered a verdict in his favor, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was asked for his thoughts on the same. However, the Austrian did not seem affected about which of his drivers won the race.
The comments mentioned by Wolff below came in immediately after the race when the FIA had taken no action against Russell.
“He [Lewis Hamilton] did a great job, and it’s unfortunate, but it is what it is,” Wolff remarked after the race, speaking to Ariana Bravo for F1TV.
As for Hamilton, before inheriting the win, he was visibly dejected with a P2 finish. He mentioned during the cooldown room chatter that Mercedes missed the mark with the strategy for him. The #44 driver reported before both of his pit stops that the tires felt good, but the team boxed him regardless.
“We was NOWHERE and then today we was ahead of everyone”
Toto Wolff reacts to a Mercedes 1-2 in Spa pic.twitter.com/3AIV80gM0T
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) July 28, 2024
Russell, on the other hand, was the first to pit from the leading group on lap 10. As per Pirelli’s predicted strategy graph, he would have had to pit around lap 25 or 30 for a second set of hard tires. However, the #63 driver took his hard tires to the end. Unfortunately, since his car ended up being underweight, he failed to win the race.
While Hamilton was fortunate to see his teammate disqualified, he also did all the hard work upfront by overtaking Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc in the opening laps to be in a position to win the race. And with his teammate getting disqualified, he registered his 105th F1 win.
Wolff thinks Hamilton overshot the team’s expectations
Speaking after the race, Wolff explained how the team was not expecting to win the race at Spa-Francorchamps. After a disappointing Free Practice on Friday, the Austrian wasn’t expecting anything more than a podium from Hamilton.
“We were expecting at best a podium – but the car worked well on one-stop and two-stops,” said Wolff. He also explained how the team figured out that the poor form on Friday was because of a mechanical issue instead of the floor lacking performance.
The Mercedes boss said he would have liked to see two winners at Spa because both his drivers showed very good pace. “I’d like to have two winners today,” Wolff added while speaking to Sky Sports F1.
