Last weekend, Formula One driver George Russell crossed the finish line first, beating his teammate Lewis Hamilton by 0.526 seconds. Alas, Russell was disqualified due to his 796.5 kg car being 1.5 kg (~3.3 lbs) under the minimum 798 kg weight. That’s a rough way to lose.

I know precious little about F1 racing, but I found two factors here fascinating. First, Russell only stopped to change his tires (or “tyres”, if you prefer, which I do not) once during the race. That meant his tires were more worn down at the end of the race than if he’d changed them twice, as most other racers did:

But while the performance of the tyres was still good, the physical rubber on the tyre was still wearing away. A set of F1 tyres (minus rims) weigh 42kg when new, but can lose as much as 3kg in wear during a long stint.

Another reason Russell’s car was underweight? He didn’t get a chance to “clean up” the track during a cooldown lap:

On a normal cooldown lap at any other circuit, drivers stray into the run-off areas to pick up discarded rubber and debris on their hot and sticky tyres. This practice can add as much as 2kg in weight to the tyres (although that figure is dependent on how much the driver goes looking for it) and race engineers routinely remind their drivers to get plenty of “pickup” after the chequered flag. However, with no cooldown lap at Spa, Russell was unable to pick up any rubber.

Gosh, that’s goofy.