Here’s an on-the-flag report of Nico Rosberg’s latest triumph:
Summing up
Rosberg says “it’s been an awesome weekend, the car’s been fantastic” before bigging up Russian F1. “The sport is growing here,” he booms. “I enjoyed it out there, and enjoyed going flat out to the end.”
Hamilton said it was not the easiest first corner but “all races have been the same so far”. He’s happy for the team, he says, but looks decidedly glum. “There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I could win it, I had the pace,” he says, “but then I had a problem with the engine.” Ho hum.
Raikkonen, having secured Ferrari’s 700th ever podium, said third “wasn’t exactly what we want” but was pleased with his start, even if he couldn’t sustain it after the restart. “We were not fast enough for Mercedes,” he concedes.
Well that was all a bit too easy for Rosberg for it to be a classic race. The early chaos will generate some fallout though, with home hero Kvyat becoming something of a villain for his role in Vettel’s earlier withdrawal. Lewis Hamilton’s winless run continues, as it always looked likely to after his travails yesterday, though he fought his way back impressively to take second. And there were decent drives from Alonso, Magnussen and Button too. Stay on the site for our race report and all the reaction and analysis from Sochi.
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Rosberg is now being awkwardly glad-handed back stage by Vladimir Putin, such is modern sport (and modern politics). Punk revivalism’s Bernie Ecclestone is beaming excitedly among it all too.
How they finished
Rosberg’s lead from Hamilton is now 43 points, and Mercedes are romping it even more emphatically in the Constructors’ Championship. “We’ve finally done it in Russia,” says Mercedes engineer Tony Ross to his race winner, who of course didn’t complete this race last year.
Bottas finishes fourth, Masa fifth and Alonso gets on the board at last in sixth. Elsewhere, Magnussen gets Renault’s first points of the season, finishing seventh. And Jenson Button secures a top-10 slot in 10th. Toto Wolff confirms the “water-leak problem” on Hamilton’s car, and he had “strange signals” from Rosberg’s. Hamilton “will get the break eventually”, says Mercedes’ executive director.
Lewis Hamilton is second to make it another Mercedes 1-2, Kimi Raikkonen takes third. Hamilton’s not a man to settle for second, but he drove very well nonetheless and will have reasons for satisfaction.
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Nico rosberg wins the Russian Grand Prix!
That fast penultimate lap of 39 was a stern statement of intent and Rosberg just cruises home, and it’s another Mercedes triumph in Russia.
Lap 52: In the manner of a cricket team chasing down a modest target of 200, Rosberg is just getting them in metaphorical singles as he eases towards victory. His lead is unassailable after setting the fastest lap on the 52nd circuit.
Lap 51: Jolyon Palmer is overtaken for 12th by Ricciardo. Grosjean is still winning the battle for eighth, but no change at all in the podium positions as we go into the penultimate lap.
Lap 50: Jenson Button takes on Sainz at a turn and moves into the top 10 outright. There’s points to be had for the former champion here, with Grosjean and Perez ahead of him within reach. Rosberg leads by more than 14 seconds now.
Lap 49: Raikkonen is closing on Hamilton, the gap between second and third closing eight seconds.
Lap 48: Button in 11th still hasn’t got past the penalised Sainz but 8th and 9th are within his sights if he can overtake. The Rosberg Procession Event continues out at the front though. He’s 12.8secs clear of Hamilton.
Lap 47: Felipe Massa pits to put on super-soft tyres. He stays fifth though. A few places back Grosjean has stretched his advantage in eighth over his nearest pursuer Pérez.
Lap 46: Mercedes have never been beaten in a Russian grand prix, we are reminded, and they’re not going to be here now either. Raikkonen in third stretches his lead over Bottas in fourth to more than 11 seconds.
Going back to the start of the race kerfuffling, “Kvyat might as well write his letter of resignation after that incident,” thunders Matthew Hull. “This track is bad. This is the new Valencia. It’s so dull and uninspired. It’s a car park surrounded by a prison camp.”
Lap 45: Hamilton’s lead over Raikkonen is being cut a little too, the Finn in third place now only 11 seconds behind the world champion. Rosberg looks utterly untroubled now, and is poised to extend his championship lead even further.
Lap 44: Kevin Magnussen is having an excellent race in his Renault, currently winning the hotly contested battle for seventh. Rosberg leads by 13.7secs, and coming up to some more backmarker traffic.
Lap 43: Button has a very good top-10 shout here, just tucked in in 11th behind Mainz, who has a penalty to be added. The gap between Rosberg and Hamilton is 13.5secs.
Lap 42: “Lewis the situation has stabilised,” the world champion is told over the radio. But he’s still more than 13 seconds back with less than a quarter of the race remaining. It’s been confirmed that he was losing water pressure.
Lap 41: Wehrlein goes into the pits for a while to put super-softs back on. They’re having trouble fitting them, and he’s sat there for almost a minute. Rosberg still leads, and it’s stretched to 13 seconds from Hamilton
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Lap 40: Williams’ race has faded badly since the stops, with Bottas and Masa drifting a little in fourth and fifth. Raikkonen has cemented his advantage over them in third.
Lap 39: Jenson Button is well placed for an assualt on the top 10, sitting 11th but gaining ground and with the seventh placed car in sight.
Lap 38: Hamilton’s definitely going slower, dogged by the overheating issue, while Rosberg sets a new lap record. Raikkonen remains third.
Lap 37: Uh-oh. Hamilton is radioed to be told he has a water pressure issue. You can hear the despair in the driver’s sigh, given that he’d taken five seconds off Rosberg since the pitstops. On he perseveres, 8.220 secs behind.
Lap 36: The gap between the front two closes, to 7.2secs, which is no mean feat for Hamilton given the traffic he had to deal with on this lap. The other big jostle is between seventh, where Magnussen currently is, and Palmer in 12th.
Lap 35: Hamilton’s an outsider in this race, but he’s still going for it. He struggles to overtake the backmarkers though, and remains second behind a composed Rosberg.
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Lap 34: Max Verstappen has a bit of engine bother with his Toro Rosso, and has stopped on turn two. That’s his race done, after a promising start. So Alonso moves into sixth.
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Lap 33: Rosberg has moved past Nasr and Wehrlein, among the backmarkers a lap behind, and is now taking on Kvyatt. Hamilton closes the gap to 8.4sec and Raikkonen’s 17 seconds behind in third place. Bottas is fourth and Masa fifth.
Lap 32: Rosberg is now coming into a bit of lapped traffic in front of him, as he moves into a group of four or five cars. Hamilton’s gaining a bit more – 11.1secs now.
Lap 31: The gap between Rosberg in first and Hamilton in second is now down to 11.443 seconds. Meanwhile Perez moves above Sainz into the top 10.
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Lap 30: Fernando Alonso is having a good, smooth race, in seventh place, and well placed to get his first points this term.
Lap 29: Ricciardo overhauls Magnusen to put himself in eighth but Magnussen comes back at him annd regains his position, Grosjean is involved too and overtakes Ricciardo. It’s a tenacious old battle for scraps there.
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Lap 28: Meanwhile, the front three is unchanged. The gap from Rosberg to his pursuers still formidable.
Lap 27: Kvyat is at the centre of things again, as Wehrlein takes him on but he is then resisted by Nasr place. It’s a right old ding-dong battle and Kvyat then does taken on Wehrlein and moves ahead of him in 17th.
Lap 26: Sainz has been hit with a 10-second penalty.
Lap 25: For all the despondency in the Hamilton camp this weekend, he’s driven with composure and skill today. Carlos Sainz is under investigation for forcing Palmer off the track in the incident at turn 2 in lap 23. Rosberg still clear in front by 12.8secs.
Lap 24: Daniel Ricciardo, well placed on the grid but who began dreadfully, continues to toil in 10th. But no change in the podium positions, though Hamilton’s just set a new fastest lap in the race time of 1:40.922
Lap 23: Verstappen finally comes in for his pit stop. Further back, Jolyon Palmer almost came off at turn two, having to go wide and slow, but he continues. The Briton sits in 14th. It’s now Rosberg 1 Hamilton 2 Raikkonen 3.
Lap 22: Rosberg leads from Hamilton and Raikkonen, in net podium terms. Verstappen is currently second, but has yet to pit.
Lap 21: As things shake down after a glut of pit stops, Raikkonen has moved up into a net podium place, ahead of Bottas. All of this is passing Rosberg by, who leads comfortably.
Lap 20: Raikkonen is being brought into the pits, as Bottas gets past Alonso. Rosberg still leads.
Lap 19: Hamilton throws a move on Bottas down the inside on turn 2, it’s a real old battle, and Hamilton forges clear. He’s currently fifth. Alonso ahead of him in fourth. Raikkonen second, Verstappen third.
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Lap 18: Hamilton follows into the pits. Soft tyres coming on in a 3.2sec change, 0.5sec slower than Bottas’s. And Bottas takes on Hamilton at turn two as the latter returns, and Bottas moves back ahead of him. Will that longer pit-stop time prove pivotal? Rosberg still leads.
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Lap 17: Bottas comes in for his pit stop, soft compounds going on. It’s an impressively swift change from the Williams team. But Hamilton is second for now. And away from the track Vettel and Christian Horner are having a bit of a feisty exchange.
Lap 16: Hamilton backs off a little, possibly cooling tyres and engine, but Bottas is holding position well in second. Raikkonen is enjoying these super-softs, as he showed over the previous two days, and is likely to remain a threat.
Lap 15: Rosberg leads, Bottas second, Hamilton within DRS range in third, Raikkonen still close to the Briton in fourth.
Lap 14: Already, second is looking Hamilton’s best bet, which is a fine recovery from qualifying but not what he ultimately wants. Sebastian Vettel is now being interviewed. “I got a big hit, lucky not to spin into turn two,” he says. He’s calmed down a little, officially anyway. “These things happen,” he says when asked about Kvyat. “There’s nothing I could have done differently,” he sighs.
Lap 13: Raikkonen is making some ground again in fourth place, maling up 7/10 of a second on Hamilton, Rosberg now nine seconds clear after setting the fastest lap time.
Lap 12: Hamilton still not quite near enough to make his move. Rosberg still leads. Nasr is in the pits with a slow puncture
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Lap 11: Elsewhere, Perez is within a second of Button, the British driver still 12th. As it was at the front. No big moves yet.
Lap 10: Some movement from the Mercedes team in the garage as Rosberg continues to lead from Bottas, with Hamilton third.
Lap 9: The unruffled Bottas increases his lead over Hamilton to 7/10 of a second. Rosberg still leads.
Lap 8: It’s as you were. Kvyatt’s Red Bull is damaged, and his already chaotic race takes another turn. He’s back in the pits. Possibly to retire? No, a 10-second stop-go penalty.
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Lap 7: Raikkonen tries to take on Bottas again, but Bottas holds him off, and then Hamilton takes him on on the turn, cuts inside and moves into third. Excellent stuff.
Lap 6: Hamilton is four and a half seconds behind Rosberg, who still leads. The top order stays the same
Lap 5: Hamilton is nicely placed here, he has the leaders in his sights but Rosberg is still clear. Kvyat pitted and is now trying to forge his way back up the field, into 15th, though he may face a penalty for that earlier mess. Bottas is second, Raikkonen third.
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Lap 4: Bottas overtakes Raikkonen on the restart, Hamilton moves on Masa and climbs into fourth. Fernando Alonso has crept up to seventh. Rosberg is yet to be troubled out in front though, three seconds clear.
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Lap 3: Replaying the Vettel incident again, the mic relays him complaining of hitting twice. His language is, well, industrial. He’s an angry man – Kvyatt may need to steer clear of him later. The safety car is coming in at the end of this lap.
Lap 2: It’s confirmed that Kvyat hit Vettel twice. Well turn 2 has proven its menace here – that was mayhem. The full safety car is still out. Hulkenburg was also a victim of that early chaos and is out. Rosberg leads from Raikkonen, with Bottas third, Masa fourth, Hamilton fifth
Lap 1: Perez took a knock too and he’s losing rubber. He and Ricciardo have pitted already. Rosberg leads from Bottas, with Raikkonen third.
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Go, go, go!
Pretty much the entire field start on super-softs. Rosberg is away well. Ricciardo gains a place on Vettel, then Raikkonen takes second on turn 2 and then Vettel is out on the first corner! – a Red Bull colliding with the Ferrari colliding, thought to be Kvyat’s. Hamilton is up into fifth.
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And they’re out for the Russian anthem (still one of the finest, musically), Bernie Ecclestone casting his eyes solemnly skyward, perhaps as a reverent gesture to his political mucker Vlad P. It’s a beautiful day in Sochi, the mountains providing an alluring backdrop.
Martin Brundle’s doing his grid walk, and stumbles into Niki Lauda, who says Hamilton must stay out of trouble at the start and just keep on going. He should be able to pass comfortably enough. Lauda’s dismissive of claims more safety regulation is needed. “Today, Formula One is safe,” he proclaims. Jenson Button, starting in 12th, is accosted for some epic bantz about the olduns’ disco in their hotel last night. Red Bull’s Christian Horner says “we’re not allowed to talk about” fuel consumption issues, and quips that they’ll be talking about it in code. But he’s upbeat about Daniel Ricciardo’s chances, staring from fifth.
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Talk in the paddock that conditions make this a possible one-stop race for drivers, beginning with super-soft tyres before switching to softs. Max Verstappen’s spluttering exhaust sounded a bit poorly as it started in the practice lane there.
Meanwhile, you’ll be wanting a Sochi circuit guide won’t you? Here goes:
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Let’s not forget, of course, that this weekend is one of the sport’s most poignant of anniversaries. This is the first time a grand prix has taken place on 1 May since Aytron Senna’s death. Lewis hasn’t forgotten:
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How they line up on the grid:
1 Rosberg 1:35.417
2 Bottas 1:36.536
3 Raikkonen 1:36.663
4 Massa 1:37.016
5 Ricciardo 1:37.125
6 Pérez 1:37.212
7 Vettel 1:36.1233
8 Kvyat 1:37.459
9 Verstappen 1:37.583
10 Hamilton
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Preamble
Afternoon everyone. M’colleague Giles Richards argued entertainingly in the week that Bernie Ecclestone’s latest bout of shock-jockish opinion-blabbing indicated the F1 supremo was going through a punk phase - “there’s no future – and F1’s dreeaamiiiinnng”, if you will – though such is the persistent low-level discontented whine about the state of the sport that it feels more like an ’80s indie-miserabilism period. Either that, or full-on, strumming-on-the-porch whiskey-soused Blues. Cockpit protection rules, engine regulations, a general need for greater entertainment – you name it, there’s complaints about it.
We need some decent racing then. We did get an incident-packed race in Shanghai last time out, to be fair, the upshot of it being, however, that Nico Rosberg extended his already dominant lead at the top of the standings. And he’s set fair to extend it today, having taken pole effortlessly yesterday. Though he had pole last year in Russia too, and ended up retiring early and handing victory to Lewis Hamilton.
Ah Hamilton. His transformation from gilded all-conquering superstar to F1’s Unlucky Alf continued yesterday with more engine woe in qualifying. Toto Wolff on Sky right now is dismissing conspiracy theory talk from “lunatics” and says “the last thing we want to do is penalise Lewis”. The team are “doing their utmost” to help the world champion, he says.
Reuters, meanwhile, is reporting that Mercedes have flown parts in by private jet from Britain overnight to keep Hamilton on the starting grid after his engine problems yesterday. He will definitely start from 10th
The Briton will start the race in 10th place, with championship-leading team mate Nico Rosberg on pole position and set for his seventh win in a row, but his predicament could have been much worse.
The team said Hamilton, who has not won since he took his third title in Texas last October, would have had to start from the pitlane if a new fuel system had not been flown to Sochi from the engine factory at Brixworth.
Drivers are allowed five power units per season, and are penalised for exceeding that amount, but they can swap out the six main components without sanction as long as they remain within their quota and the parts are of the same specification.
Hamilton’s problem was that the unit in his car at Sochi had been upgraded since the previous race in China and the team did not have a spare fuel system in Russia of the same specification.
“We had to fly out a fuel system on a chartered jet yesterday evening, arriving here in the early hours, and the spare engine was then kitted with these parts during the night,” a spokesman said.
The engine is not subject to strict post-qualifying ‘parc ferme’ rules which keep the car off limits to mechanics overnight.
“When the car came out of parc ferme this morning, the spare power unit was fitted and has now fired up successfully in the garage,” said the spokesman.
Hamilton has won the only two races held to date in Sochi, taking last year’s after Rosberg started on pole position and then suffered a throttle failure.
The Briton had started from the back of the grid in China after failing to set a time in qualifying due to another power unit failure.
Mercedes said they had re-fitted the unit Hamilton used in the Australian season-opener in Melbourne, which was the spare for Sochi.
The control electronics and energy store were replaced to eliminate them as a potential source of the problem but the unit that failed will not be inspected until the return to the factory.
They’re off at 1pm.
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Tom Davies will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Giles Richards’ latest report from trackside.
Formula One’s race director Charlie Whiting has confirmed that the use of a cockpit protection device in the sport is still set to go ahead for the 2017 season,despite objections from some drivers over the weekend in Russia.
However the F1 chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, stated on Sunday morning that he was not in favour of employing the cockpit safety system.
Whiting also confirmed that there is a timetable in place for a decision to be made between the two systems currently being tested, the halo device and Red Bull’s aeroscreen, which made its first appearance in Sochi on Friday in practice.
The deadline for confirming which device will be instituted was 1 July, Whiting said, to allow teams time to incorporate it into their designs for next year’s cars, which will also be subject to the new aero and engine regulations that were confirmed this week.
“It would be unreasonable if we didn’t have a clear path by that time,” said Whiting. “It would be fairly unreasonable to expect teams to change chassis which is what it amounts to because this is a fundamental part of it. Their chassis design is normally fixed by this time. It’s only a small part of the chassis and it’s not going to affect things like fuel volume and those big things but it’s still part of a complex design process.”
Ecclestone, speaking at the track in Sochi on Sunday morning, was less enamoured of the concept. When asked what Formula One should do on the cockpit safety question he answered “nothing” and asserted that racing should continue with an open cockpit.
“I don’t like it,” he said and added that he did not believe it would necessarily achieve its goal, before questioning the testing methods the devices had undergone. He asked why the sport should “try to simulate something where you have a stationary object and fire a tyre at it, when in the race when the wheel has come off normally both cars will be moving?
“So how can you simulate it by having a car stationary? And how would you ever know what is going to happen with a wheel? If it hits the thing it will probably bounce off anyway.”
The halo device, tested by Ferrari during pre-season, was understood to be the strong favourite to be employed but the success of Red Bull’s aeroscreen, which they will run again in free practice in Spain and Monaco, has levelled the playing field.
“Both devices are equally likely,” said Whiting. “A couple of months ago I would have said that the Red Bull solution was not likely to be implemented in 2017 but they have really accelerated the work on it in a short space of time to bring it to the point where it has now been tested successfully in the same way as the halo.”
Ecclestone’s opinions are likely to hold little sway with the FIA who, although they could impose the device on teams, are unlikely to feel the need to do so, although a unanimous agreement would still be required to introduce a device in 2017. “Everyone’s aware that we want to press ahead with this,” Whiting said. “We are not expecting any teams to object, simply because it is a matter of safety. We are not expecting to have to invoke the safety card.”
If both devices reach the same safety standard the decision on which to choose will be put to the F1 commission.
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