Mercedes: We don't understand why Russell's car was underweight

The result was Russell losing his win after being disqualified, while teammate, seven-time Formula 1 Champion, Lewis Hamilton, inherited the win.

To put it simply, the weight of Russell's car as per the regulations should should not be less than 798Kg without fuel, but when the stewards took 2.8 liters of fuel as a sample, and with the car still having fuel in it, it weighed 796.5Kg. 1.5Kg less than allowed.

Speaking after the disqualification in Mercedes' race report, Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin said: "It's really tough for George to have been disqualified from the win after such an impressive drive. He did a brilliant job to hang onto the tyres and defend to the finish.

"We don't yet understand why the car was underweight following the race but will investigate thoroughly to find the explanation," Shovlin admitted. "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," Shovlin concluded.

What Shovlin mentioned about loss of rubber as the reason why Russell's car was underweight in the theory that may best explain what happened.

The four tyres of a car can lose approximately 1Kg of rubber over one stint, something teams account for in their pre-race calculations.

In Spa, the lap is the longest on the F1 calendar which combined with Russell's admirable, yet longer than expected, might have caused even more rubber to be lost.

Moreover, at Spa, their is no cool down lap and the cars enter the pitlane at the exit of Turn 1, which means there is no chance for them to pick up rubber marbles (rubber shreds that F1 cars drop during the race) which may compensate the lost tyre weight.

An extra point to consider is that the preferred strategy ahead of the Belgian GP was a two-stopper, but Mercedes and Russell decided to improvise during the race and went for a one-stopper.

This means Mercedes may not have accounted for the extra loss of rubber from Russell's set of Hard tyres he used on his second and final stint.