Not particularly a fan of Russell, but that was an inspired drive, and deserved win…rules are rules though…
an inspired drive that was probably possible because of the underweight car. 1,5 kg is significant and might have enabled him do a 1-stop.
Yeah, it’s no wonder his tires were able to last so long
1.5kg, oof. That’s more than the lap of picking up marbles would’ve given on other circuits. Just a mistake by the team. At least they pick up a win, but a blow to Russell and the team for sure.
Makes me wonder what the difference between a super used set of tires and a 30% used set of tires would be, though.
For sure, same! I think the whole assembly is 10-12 kg these days, only would need to lose ~400g additional per tire to be 1.5 under
Pirelli have said up to 1kg per tire, from new to fully used.
Tough but fair
Kinda explains how he managed the one stopper…1.5kg is pretty significant
So this is on Mercedes for miscalculating the weight and a DSQ is only fair.
However, this whole tyre weight and marble pickup thing seems so silly:
You pick up a different amount of marbles depending on track length (or no in-lap like in Spa), rain can wash them away, if you do a long stint your tyres have less rubber left on them. Tyres are standardized, identical between all teams for the whole season and Pirelli knows exactly how much they weigh brand new. After the race FIA could just weigh the car without wheels. I’m assuming right now teams are leaving a slight weight margin, so they would be able to run even closer to the limit if they didn’t have to worry about tyre weight.
The fact is several other drivers did a one stop without running into the weight issue and in the past, we have had drivers do almost the whole race distance on a set of tyres after switching to a hard after an early safety car(lap 2 or 3). Never in those cases has the car been underweight. This is a cock up by Mercedes and nobody else.
Does anybody know how much weight the tyres lose during a long stint like Russel did? And when compared to a 20-lap?
OK I found it myself : https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/were-russells-worn-tyres-the-cause-of-his-spa-f1-disqualification/10640096/
“We expect that the loss of rubber from the one-stop was a contributing factor, and we’ll work to understand how it happened.
“We won’t be making any excuses though. It is clearly not good enough and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The missing weight of 1.5kg may sound like a lot, but we are only talking about 375 grammes from each corner.
And as Pirelli head of F1 Mario Isola has explained, that is well within the boundaries of how much a worn tyre loses.
Definitely not 1.5 kgs worth.
Why “definitely”, please publish your info? Pirelli disagrees with you.
No word on the specific cause that I’ve seen, just the team acknowledged that they made an error according to the release from the stewards. I’m not insinuating anything but I have to wonder how that happened and if it was isolated to just George’s car.
It sucks, a sour end to an otherwise brilliant day for him and the team.
Could this be a factor in why Russell was able to do a 1stopper when everyone else couldn’t? Because his car simply was so much lighter?
Others did do a 1-stop. Alonso and Tsunoda I believe. They weren’t underweight.
I don’t think the issue is the tyres, I think it was a cockup from the garage.
That would have vaulted him past Perez in the standings up to 7th.
It was a great drive by Russell and even bolder strategy call from him.
Mercedes fucked up big time. Now they have lost a lot of points and helped McLaren and Redbull get even further ahead in the standings.
Weird band name. Just ripping off Breaking Benjamin.
