Mercedes’ race technical director Andrew Shovlin has explained some of the reasons behind George Russell’s disqualification from the Belgian Grand Prix.

The 50-year-old highlighted a number of factors that came together to leave the Briton and his car 1.5kg lighter than the FIA’s post-race inspection weight limit.

Russell and Mercedes executed a bold pit stop strategy at Spa-Francorchamps to win from sixth on the grid, finishing less than a second ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who went on to win.

Shovlin said that while the team were still trying to figure out what happened, the car could lose a significant amount of weight during the race – and so could the driver.

“It’s obviously very disappointing and unfortunate, especially after he [George Russell] drove such a strong race to win by a long margin,” said the British engineer.

“We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened. A lot of that work involves determining the weight of all the different components, and the car can lose quite a bit of weight over the course of a race.

“You’ll see tyre wear, skid wear, brake wear, oil consumption, the driver himself can lose a lot of weight, and in this particular race, George lost quite a bit of weight.”

Shovlin added that although the two Mercedes cars were only 500 grams apart after qualifying, Russell’s weight loss over the course of the race, combined with excessive skid wear and tyre failure, was the deciding factor in the win.

By opting for a one-stop strategy, a decision made early in the race, Russell’s tyres wore more than usual for a race-ending compound.

His 34-lap time far exceeded Pirelli’s predictions, and most of the participants felt the stop strategy Twice is optimal.

“Now, the cars start the race at the same weight,” Shovlin added. “Lewis [Hamilton] and George were both weighed after qualifying, within 500 grams of each other.

“George’s car was the only one that had a problem, and it was because the tyres were worn more.

“It looks like we lost more material on the board. But we’ll take all that data, look at how we can improve our process, because obviously we don’t want that to happen in the future.”