“A car can lose a lot of weight during a race. There’s tire wear, there’s tread wear, there’s brake wear, there’s oil consumption. The driver himself can lose a lot, and in this particular race George lost a lot of weight.
“Both cars started the race at the same weight. Lewis and George both weighed in after qualifying. The cars were within 500g. Only George’s car had problems, and the problems were much more severe, such as tyre wear.
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“It looks like we lost more material in the plank, but we’re going to collect all the data and see how we can improve the process, because obviously we don’t want that to happen in the future.”
Asked about the impact of Russell’s weight loss, Schaublin added: “It doesn’t affect the speed at the start of the race because George’s car and Lewis’ car start the race with the same weight.
“Obviously George’s car lost weight faster than Lewis’s throughout the race, so there is an advantage associated with that. But it’s a hundredth of a second per lap. When you’re talking about one or two kilograms, it’s very small because it doesn’t correspond to many lap times. But as I said, the car weighed the same at the start of the race.”
