Poll: Official 2024 Belgian Grand Prix Race Thread - Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps - Race 14/24

Rate the Spa race out of ten

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Mr Jack said:
Mercedes have put up their debrief:


tl;dw: Russell and Lewis' cars were the same weight to within 500g at the start of the race, any difference in the final weight came from higher tyre wear on George's car and greater weight loss (through sweat, etc.) from the driver.
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So the one stop in this case was in fact a strategy blunder then.
 
ZG002 said:
Weighing the car without tyres would take too long and then you would have to weigh the tyre to make sure the team hadn't done something to them etc etc.

Got to work within them rules.
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I can't see why the tyres would need to ever be weighed. What can be identified from the weight of a tyre? Any modification to try to cheat, would only be detrimental to the level of grip provided in terms of weight. Nobody would wear them down to ridiculous levels as it would affect ride height and plank wear and would become a safety risk. You'd also be dog slow with no grip.

On that basis, surely weighing the car without tyres would be as simple as driving the car over a platform which aligns with the plank, which is able to lift and weigh the car by rising up onto the plank only, like an undercar jack/trolley they put the cars on. Your team are ordered to come to the top of the pitlane and remove the tyres with the provided standard issue pit gun per wheel. Then the car gets weighed with no tyres.

We don't have to be overly reactive given this has happened apparently twice in 30 years (as someone said above?) but it does seem a shame to be so marginal and require pickup to bring a car home above weight. A better system would be to take tyres out of it to allow high deg and pushing tyre envelopes for more exciting, contrasting strategies.
 
jaybee said:
I can't see why the tyres would need to ever be weighed. What can be identified from the weight of a tyre? Any modification to try to cheat, would only be detrimental to the level of grip provided in terms of weight. Nobody would wear them down to ridiculous levels as it would affect ride height and plank wear and would become a safety risk. You'd also be dog slow with no grip.

On that basis, surely weighing the car without tyres would be as simple as driving the car over a platform which aligns with the plank, which is able to lift and weigh the car by rising up onto the plank only, like an undercar jack/trolley they put the cars on. Your team are ordered to come to the top of the pitlane and remove the tyres with the provided standard issue pit gun per wheel. Then the car gets weighed with no tyres.

We don't have to be overly reactive given this has happened apparently twice in 30 years (as someone said above?) but it does seem a shame to be so marginal and require pickup to bring a car home above weight. A better system would be to take tyres out of it to allow high deg and pushing tyre envelopes for more exciting, contrasting strategies.
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They have to give them back to Pirelli anyway, so they could do the weighing and make sure everything arrived back without modification.

It's not like they weigh the other used sets, so if there was some way to cheat, you could do it on the first 1-2 sets because they only "check" the last.

It is a stupid rule and a shame that Russell made a good call but the team seemingly never considered the 1 stop and weighted the car accordingly.
 
Mr Jack said:
Mercedes have put up their debrief:


tl;dw: Russell and Lewis' cars were the same weight to within 500g at the start of the race, any difference in the final weight came from higher tyre wear on George's car and greater weight loss (through sweat, etc.) from the driver.
Click to expand...
The same weight to within 500g doesn't make sense, they're saying the cars were the same weight but George's car was up to 0.5kg lighter?
 
Feek said:
That's blatantly not correct. The car was below the weight of all the other cars all the way through the race.
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Not necessarily, we don't know when the underweight occurred. The car couldn't have started the race underweight as they are all weighed, as stated.
Anyway the Mercedes explanation
BBC News - Mercedes explain Russell's Belgium GP disqualification
www.bbc.com

Mercedes explain George Russell Belgian Grand Prix disqualification

Mercedes say George Russell was disqualified from the Belgian Grand Prix because the car’s tyres, underfloor ‘plank’ and Russell himself lost more weight than expected.
www.bbc.com

Edit: just realised after reading back through the thread the explanation has also been shared.
 
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