Mercedes explain why Hamilton and Russell ‘tripped over each other’ at Spa

Russell ended up getting in Hamilton’s way and hindering both Mercedes driver’s laps after locking his tyres into Turn 1 during the final flying laps on a drying Spa-Francorchamps in Saturday’s Sprint Shootout. 

Hamilton eventually passed Russell on the Kemmel Straight but his lap was already ruined after he was forced to back out of the throttle through Eau Rouge. 

The incident left Hamilton only seventh on the grid for the sprint, while Russell was down in 10th. 

“In order to explain that I think I first need to explain how difficult it is to get right in the first place,” said chief technical officer Mike Elliott. 

“When you’ve got a track that is drying it is nearly always the case the quickest lap is going to be the very last lap of the run and so your first laps are about getting a banker lap in and then as you get to the end of the session you want to be at the right place so you are just about crossing the line at the end of the session with your tyres in the right window. 

“So, we are pretty much heading towards that but what we could see was in the last corners, so in 18 and 19, where you get to open the lap there was a lot of queuing, a lot of cars there, and so we were worried about getting over the line before the session ended. 

“And we were asking our drivers to speed up, they thought they had less time available than they really did and as a result of that we ended up with our two cars too close together. 

“As it happened, I think a number of cars were disadvantaged. A number of the cars were far too close together, so we weren’t the only ones that were struggling. 

“Unfortunately for us, our two drivers tripping over each other pretty much meant that we didn’t get the laps that we wanted and therefore didn’t get the sprint qualifying result we really hoped for.”

Russell blamed poor communication for the near-miss, while Hamilton was convinced he would have qualified on the front row had his final lap not been affected. 

It was the second qualifying incident involving the pair during the Belgium weekend, while they also made contact during qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix. 

Elliott confirmed that Mercedes will review their communications as a result of the incident. 

“As always we’ll go back, we’ll review the footage, we’ll review the radio communications and we will see what learnings we can extract, work out how we can improve for the future,” he added. 

“I am definitely sure there are some learnings we can extract from this weekend.”