The FIA stripped George Russell off his Belgian Grand Prix win after his car failed a post-race inspection. This allowed Lewis Hamilton to inherit the race win and fans were quick to bring forth the seven-time world champion's mighty luck factor into the discussion.
Following a thorough check, Jo Bauer, the Technical Delegate of the FIA found Russell's car to be underweight by 1.5 kilograms. The weight was noted at 798 kilograms initially, which is the minimum weight, as per the FIA norm.
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However, after draining down 2.8 kilograms of fuel, the car weighed 796.5 kilograms, which was a monumental breach of Article 4.1 of the FIA Formula 1 Technical Regulations. In a nutshell, Russell's disqualification promoted Lewis Hamilton as the seven-time world champion claimed his 105th F1 GP win on Sunday.
However, fans were not in the mood to call it Hamilton's hard-earned victory, as they felt he got lucky.
Below are some reactions taken from X:
A fan mentioned the 'lucky' Mercedes driver, "Lewis (Hamilton) lucks into another win. Of course."
Another fan had a similar take on Hamilton's win, "As usual, Lewis Hamilton is the lucky one."
"Wow … congrats to Lewis on the hard fought victory," another fan had a sarcastic take on Hamilton's win with a laughing emoji.
Notably, the decision spoiled a hard-fought victory for George Russell, and fans could not help but feel gutted for him.
"Really disappointing for George," a fan said after the decision was announced.
"oh no!!!! heartbreaking," another fan said after George Russell managed a one-stop strategy and won the race only to be disqualified.
Another fan shared his thoughts on the situation, "Sad for George. It would’ve been his best win. That's twice in the past 2 seasons Merc have let this happen, some accountability is needed here."
Toto Wolff's statement on George Russell's disqualification
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff shared his thoughts following the unfortunate disqualification of one of their drivers, George Russell. Wolff and Mercedes through a statement, apologized to the British driver.
"We have to take our disqualification on the chin. We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it. We will go away, evaluate what happened, and understand what went wrong. To lose a 1-2 is frustrating and we can only apologize to George who drove such a strong race."
"Lewis is of course promoted to P1; he was the fastest guy on the two-stop and is a deserving winner. Despite the disqualification, there are many positives we can take from this weekend. We had a car that was the benchmark in today's race across two different strategies. Only a few months ago that would have been inconceivable."
Despite the disqualification, Mercedes kept their victory but lost a valuable 18 points in the process.
