Doubts about Lewis Hamilton emerged

Automobile Mercedes The Belgian Grand Prix saw Lewis Hamilton win his 105th Formula One race after George Russell, the first race winner, was disqualified.

According to former Formula One chairman Peter Windsor, Mercedes’ instruction to Lewis Hamilton to “give each other a lot of space” when pursuing George Russell was “unnecessary”.

In the race on Sunday, July 28, the British driver started the day in second place, while his Mercedes teammate won for the second time in four races. Nevertheless, after a post-race FIA review, Russell was disqualified, converting the 39-year-old’s second-place finish into a race victory.

When his car was weighed after the race, the investigation discovered that it was underweight. The 26-year-old, who competed brilliantly despite making just one pit stop, had to fight off his teammate in the last circuits of the race at Spa, so it was a bitter pill to chew.

Although both drivers were permitted to compete in the final laps, Hamilton received instructions from senior race engineer Peter “Bono” Bonnington to “give each other a lot of space” when pursuing Russell.

Former Formula One manager Windsor feels that this instruction was “unnecessary” and ought to have been given to Russell. He also thought it might have affected Hamilton in the last miles of the race.

“I thought it was quite interesting [with] two or three laps to go, and they [Mercedes] said ‘just give each other a lot of space’ to Lewis, I think they should have been giving that message to George actually,” Windsor stated on his channel on YouTube.

They gave it to Lewis, and I wonder if that made a slight difference. I don’t think it’s essential to say that to Lewis Hamilton since he doesn’t usually do extremely stupid things, especially when he’s with a teammate. I don’t think Lewis needed to be informed that at that point in the race, and it may have slightly lessened his aggressiveness.”

Mercedes’ first 1-2 since Brazil in 2022 was wiped out by the disqualification, and team principal Toto Wolff expressed regret to Russell for the team’s mistake, which cost the British driver his third race victory in Formula 1.

“It is imperative that we accept our disqualification,” the Austrian said. “It is obvious that we made a mistake, and we must make sure we grow from it. We’ll leave, assess the situation, and determine what went wrong. We can only apologize to George, who drove such a strong race, for losing a 1-2.

Lewis is a worthy winner who was the fastest person on the two-stop. We have a lot to be grateful for this weekend. In today’s race, we had a car that set the standard for two distinct strategies. That would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.”