SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — Lewis Hamilton was promoted to first place at Formula 1’s Belgian Grand Prix after race officials disqualified Mercedes teammate George Russell for driving an underweight car on Sunday.
Russell crossed the line first after making only one pit stop, finishing just ahead of Hamilton. He celebrated the win in Spa, which would have been the third of the 26-year-old British driver’s career.
However, race officials found his car weighed in below the established limits and ruled to disqualify his result.
“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.”
Hamilton, a seven-time F1 champion, took his record haul of career victories to 105. The 39-year-old drier has now won two of the past three races after his home triumph at Silverstone in the British GP earlier this month ended a wait of nearly 1,000 days without a victory dating to the penultimate race of 2021.
His resurgence also comes after he decided to join Ferrari next season and put an end to his 12 years with Mercedes.
“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,” Hamilton said. “It is incredibly competitive now.”
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri moved up into second place, while pole-sitter Charles Leclerc of Ferrari completed the podium at third.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who remains first in the season points standings, wound up fourth after the three-time reigning F1 champion started 11th after a 10-place grid penalty for one too many engine changes. Lando Norris endured another poor start in his McLaren and was fifth, allowing Verstappen to extend his lead to 78 points in the championship battle.
“All in all it was quite a positive day for me, considering we started at P11, and we finished in front of Lando, who is my main rival in the championship,” Verstappen said.
Russell’s disqualification ruined what had been deemed a master class in tire management after he started sixth. He pitted just once, while the other top drivers all stopped twice over the 44-lap race.
His only stop came on lap 10, so Russell stayed out for 34 laps on the same tires and fended off Hamilton, who had spent 18 laps on his last set.
After Russell shouted for joy after the checkered flag, his team radio half-jokingly praised him as “the tire whisperer.”
That was all for naught in the end.
“We have to take our disqualification on the chin,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said “We have clearly made a mistake and need to ensure we learn from it … To lose a 1-2 (finish) is frustrating, and we can only apologize to George, who drove such a strong race.”
After struggling early on this season, Mercedes has now won three of the past four races, with Russell triumphing at the Austrian GP on June 30, a week ahead of Hamilton’s British GP success.
With McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari all producing similar pace — and avoiding race-ending crashes — the victory Sunday was a question of small margins and getting the pit stops and tire strategy right. The top six finishers all crossed within 10 seconds.
The seven winners in 13 races through last weekend’s Hungarian GP had already made this season the most competitive since 2012. Verstappen has now gone four races without a win after he won four of the first five GP events this year.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was sixth Sunday, ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez, who had started second in another poor showing for the Mexican driver who is under increasing pressure. Fernando Alonso was eighth for Aston Martin, and Esteban Ocon in his Alpine and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo closed out the points.
The Spa track, set in the rolling forests of the Ardennes, is the longest in F1 at 4.3 miles. It stayed dry on Sunday in contrast to the constant drizzle the day before that led to an F2 race being postponed.
With 14 of 24 races on the F1 schedule for 2024 now down, the international open-wheel circuit enters a summer break until the Dutch GP on Aug. 25 in the Netherlands.