The REAL Reason Why Russell's Car Was Underweight in Belgium

How do people keep thinking this was due to fuel burn? The FIA measure the weight of the cars with fuel removed to determine the dry weight of the cars after the race. “The mass of the car, without fuel, must not be less than 798 kg, at all times during the competition.”

Looks like russel whispered wrong to his tyres

Imagine toto wolf now learning

Don't tyres also lose weight if you do only 1 stop and drive many laps with them?

How come the others were not underweight when all were driving under same conditions and regulations?

Tyres dreg probably helped, but 1.5kgs is a bit too much, this sounds more like an excuse. In my opinion the real reason is: he was starting in 7th and even the team didnt think he would finish on tge podium, so the odds of winning were near zero. Mclaren and Red Bull were faster and SPA is expected to be an easy track to overtake. But what we saw in the race was nothing like the usual. Despite the impressive speed of Mclaren and Verstappen, Norris made several mistakes and Piastri took several laps to overtake Leclerc. Max barely overtake anyone, needing Ricciardo and Perez to get out of the way. So track position mattered and therefore a one stop is better strat. GR ended up way above the expected and he won the race, which made FIA analyse his car.... Funny how in the end Toto was sad. Sure, they screw up LH race, but he had a 1-2! It was like Mclaren in Hungary, everyone frustrated, despite a 1-2. In my opinion they knew GR wouldnt have it. But if you state you were cheating on purpose, you get screwed, so you blame it on the tyres deg. His pace was good at the end, if he had lost 2kgs in tyres, he wouldnt have finished first.

alonso did a one stop; no penalty

Nonsense, Tyre Deg can't make you 1.5kg underweight, He was able to "Whisper" 1.5kg less to the Tyres the Entire Race. basically racing the car 1.5kg underweight the entire race

It is not rocket science... the tyres were worn down beyond what was calculated for a 2 stop strategy.

The problem was that they did practice mostly on intermediate tires, so they could not get data for tire degradation on the hard tires, so they didn’t account for the tire degradation that they would experience on a one stop strategy where Russell ran those tires for 38 laps. But by the time they were able to make an estimate for tire wear, Russell was already committed to the strategy, so they decided to take the risk, because if Russell has pitted it would have dropped him to 7th, and yes, they knew already, that’s why they only removed the required amount of fuel and tried to slip past with the additional fuel left in the car to make the weight, but they got caught, they were made to remove that additional fuel and their car was under weight. They just made the weight on the number with the additional fuel, that’s why they didn’t even make a fuss when they were caught, it probably would have been worse for them if they were accused of cheating!

I can easily see the reason being tire weight. I tested (just a month ago) weight of a new 200TW passenger car tire vs the used i was replacing. The new tire was 11kg. The used was 9kg. And this is a passenger car with tires half the size of F1...

They took the wheels off and weighed them separately, probably to compare with 20 lap old tyre, maybe.

I'm sorry, maybe I missed it. What is the "real" reason? I find it offensive when people Poise or Pose to know things but instead just spew a bunch of garbage. Apart from the misleading title, folks are in here talking about fuel, lifting and coasting, when fuel use or lack thereof has nothing to do with weight (See FIA document 42) and even! Hamilton is to blame too because he was at one point or another in Russell's slip stream! Like, Really? OMG! Ignorance is bliss Boii I tell ya. At least one person correctly pointed out that Alonso also pitted once.

Mercedes knew the car was under weight which they tried to hide by not removing all the fuel and then got caught. No excuse.

Mate I thought they didn’t measure the car with the tires on? 💀 😂 I might be wrong

Do all the cars get scrutinised? Maybe Mercedes never thought for one minute that Russell would finish in the top three?

I wonder how many times this mistake has happened in the past?

It wasn't controversial and nobody on Russel's side of the garage was shocked....

personally i don't think that you would be able to pick up 1.5kg in tyre pick up on the cool down lap...i think 1.5kg is a bit high to be able to pick up on a cool down lap

Also Mercedes took their car apart removing the upgraded parts after Friday and going back to the parts from Hungoring and last year’s back wing.