For Valterri Bottas yesterdays Grand Prix in Sochi probably felt like a bit of payback for the times when things haven’t worked out in his favour in previous races. After Hamilton’s problems both in quali on Saturday and before the race it was a fairly simple race for Bottas who collected his second win of the season without any real resistance once Lewis had made his pit stop and served his penalty (which will be discussed shortly). Max Vertappen finished within eight seconds of the number 77 Merc but never looked like being a real challenger for the win, although after two consecutive DNF’s Max and RedBull will have been very happy with that reward.
Bottas closed the points gap to his team mate by eleven points and while it is hard to see him putting any real pressure on Lewis for the title over the remaining seven races it will have done his confidence and mindset no harm at all. Championship or not he has to try and build on this win now, if for no other reason than to make the final races interesting for us fans.
So we come to Lewis’s troubles and as mentioned they begun on Saturday when he understeered wide out of the final corner on his first flying lap in Q2 and his lap was disallowed as a result. With Sebastian Vettel’s accident bringing out the red flag shortly after Hamilton had to take the soft tyres for his second run to be sure of going through to Q3. With his team mate and everyone around him on the grid on mediums he was now forced to go to an alternate strategy for the race and this is the number one reason that he would have struggled to win on Sunday, penalty or not. He was always going to be compromised as a result of his own mistake out of that final corner on his soft tyre run. Valterri knew he was going to be in the pound seats from then on.
Now to the penalty itself. Lewis stopped at the end of the pit lane outside of the designated practice start area twice on his way to the grid and was placed under investigation almost straight away and then given two 5 second penalties in the opening laps of the race, one for each time he had stopped to do a practice start.
Lewis and his team have been very vocal about the harshness of the penalties and the licence points he received but I’m afraid I have no sympathy with them. I am a Hamilton fan and have a lot of respect for him both as a driver and a person but I just cannot agree with him when he says that the stewards are targeting him. The offence was his and the team’s fault as it was in Monza and frankly the team needs to be clearer on what is allowed in certain situations. As a team they have very few weaknesses but this appears to be one area where improvement is needed.
Further to that the designated start area is there for safety reasons, as it must be said it always has been, and breaking rules that are there to keep everyone safe should carry harsh penalties. Lewis ans every other driver have always managed to stop min the right place for practice starts before so there can be no excuse now. Lewis did have his two penalty points rescinded after the race, something for which I am unsure about personally, so he can have few complaints really and he still scored a podium finish. AS he was unlikely to win with his contra strategy anyway he should just take it and move on.
Other than that O thought it was a good race with some good battles down the field and some impressive drives. Sergio Perez finished a fine fourth for Racing Point and Daniel Ricciardo came back well from his oen 5 second penalty to score a well deserved fifth ahead of LecLerc’s Ferrari.
Russia isn’t one of my favourite venues so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the race. Next we go back the Nurburgring and this is a track I have always liked, I feel like we may see a very good race there. Ans with the race being in Autumn the weather will certainly help make things interesting. Be prepared for rain, snow and everything else. Looking forward to it already.
My F1 talk 