Lewis Hamilton handed Belgian Formula 1 win as teammate George Russell disqualified

Lewis Hamilton has been handed one of the most dramatic victories of his career at the Belgian Grand Prix after Mercedes team-mate George Russell was disqualified for an illegal car, while Australia’s Oscar Piastri was promoted to second place.

Russell appeared to have taken just his third-ever F1 win following a fascinating race where the young Briton rolled the strategy dice to beat Hamilton by just half a second with Piastri crossing in third.

But two and a half hours after the chequered flag fell at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, and with both Hamilton and Russell already heading back home to Monaco, the latter was thrown out of the official result. Russell’s Mercedes was found to be 1.5 kilograms underweight.

The stewards’ decision provided Hamilton with his second win from his last three appearances, and a record-extending 105th of his career, but denied the Silver Arrows their first one-two finish since the penultimate round of the 2022 season in Brazil.Reacting, Hamilton said: “I feel for George, and you don’t want to win a race through a disqualification, but we have been back in the fight for victories in the past few races. It is incredibly competitive now.”Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admitted: “We have to learn from that. As a team there were positives but for George, it is a massive blow for it to be taken away. He is going to win more.”Russell had just completed his media rounds when he was told his triumph was in grave danger.“It is heartbreaking to be disqualified from today’s race. It had been an unbelievable grand prix for us to make the one-stop strategy work,” Russell said.“Despite the disqualification, I am of course proud to have crossed the line first. It is also good that the team was still able to take the victory with Lewis.”

Ron Meadows, the Mercedes team’s sporting director, was summoned to the stewards at 6:10 pm local time and, at 18:55, Russell’s fate was officially sealed.It meant Piastri was officially named runner-up, backing up his tremendous victory at the Hungarian GP last week.Speaking before he had heard about his subsequent move up to second, Piastri said: “It has been a good couple of weeks for myself and the (McLaren) team and we have made inroads on Red Bull and that is massive.”

Afterwards, Piastri gave his reaction on social media: “Well that was unexpected but we’ll take it,” he posted on X.

Russell’s car was weighed on the FIA inside and outside scales with both showing the same result of 796.5 kilograms, 1.5 kg below the minimum weight required and all other drivers moved up one place in the classification.“During the hearing, the team representatives confirmed that the measurement is correct and that all required procedures were performed correctly,” the governing FIA said in a release.

“The team also acknowledged that there were no mitigating circumstances and that it was a genuine error by the team.”