1) There is no magic formula for safety
Carlos Sainz Jr was travelling at 190mph when he braked on the entry into turn 13 and his rear wheels locked up. When he hit the left side wall he was still going 130mph. At the corner this first short and sharp collision had stripped the hoarding down to the metal. His final clash with the wall and journey across the run-off area only slowed him to 90mph when he hit the Tecpro barriers.
For some minutes there was real concern, especially as he had gone in so deep and the barriers had lifted and come down on top of him. Extraordinarily, and to everyone’s relief, he was fit to race on Sunday. So the barriers had done their job. But there was also great concern that his nose-first entry had lifted them onto the car. Yet the same Tecpro barriers had worked exactly as designed when Max Verstappen hit them at Monaco.
Williams’s Rob Smedley described the incident as F1 dodging a bullet. “The car shouldn’t have gone under the barriers, absolutely not. That is not what is supposed to happen,” he said.
Rightly, how it happened will be investigated, but it is worth also reiterating Smedley’s other observation that simply changing nose heights would not necessarily solve anything. “Whatever you do, you will find a freak situation like we found today that will circumnavigate all the safety work,” he said.”You will find those situations and we can never be 100% safe. There will always be something that catches you out.”
2) Williams suffer cruel rules
After Kimi Raikkonen took Valtteri Bottas out with a late lunge at turn four, the immediate interest was in whether he would be penalised and thus ensure Mercedes won their second constructors’ championship here in Sochi. He was and they did but that was cold comfort for Williams. Bottas was in a well-deserved third place at the time – the last lap of the race – but was pitched into the barriers and failed to finish, his potential 15 points converted to zero in the blink of an eye. Raikkonen was given a 30 second penalty that demoted him to eighth, but still in the points. Raikkonen insists it was a racing incident, a view that Bottas understandably does not share, but regardless of that, the stewards blamed Raikkonen. So was the penalty really fair? Williams and Ferrari are fighting for second place in the championship and the points might have been crucial. Given that, in an incident that clearly costs a team points would a grid penalty for the next race not have been a more realistic punishment and some recompense to Williams?
3) Bernie in the doldrums
Once the mighty fixer, Bernie Ecclestone’s iron grip on the sport seems increasingly weak. On Thursday the Financial Times published a story saying the sale of F1 was going through, at exactly the same time Ecclestone was in the paddock repeatedly reassuring people that there was to be no sale, because neither he nor Donald Mackenzie, the co-chairman of CVC, F1’s owners, wished to sell.
At the same time the Red Bull engine fiasco continued to whirl around the paddock. Ecclestone insisted it had been “sorted out” but no confirmation was made and sources suggest that the team are no closer to concluding a deal with Ferrari or returning to their contract with Renault than they were months ago. Indeed, what is believed to be the more likely now of the options – mending their relationship with Renault – is said to be in its infancy.
In the old days this situation would have been brought to a close privately by Ecclestone long before this stage by him banging heads together. He was trying to present that impression in Sochi but this time there was no actual evidence that he had succeeded.
4) Russia pulls it off
Derided by many for its location and relative difficulty to reach, Sochi has attracted a fair bit of flak in the past two years. But after last year’s procession, it delivered on track. Behind Lewis Hamilton’s solo run at the front, overtaking and incidents were further enlivened by a difference in tyre strategies that played out at the death. It is a track surface that is unique on the calendar and it presented rubber that was wearing and on which the drivers could push, but that was not falling off the cliff – as evidenced by Sergio Pérez’s bold and skilled run to third place.
Pirelli, who have renewed their contract with the sport until 2019, and F1 might look to this as an example of where to go in future. Equally while Friday and Saturday did not see huge crowds, come race day the Russians arrived in droves, with 62,000 the figure released by the Sochi Autodrom. A good number especially in comparison to some of the other recent additions to the calendar. And they put on a good show, with the terrifying exception of what Sebastian Vettel described as a “brave” marshall running across the track. Most marshals would have described it as dangerous and foolhardy but he made it, thankfully, to the other side.
5) Air time still mean for Mercedes
After barely making an appearance on TV during his win in Japan, Hamilton didn’t get much of a look-in in Russia either. It wasn’t quite the “blackout” as Suzuka was described but his Mercedes was certainly not in a starring role. It has been interpreted as a stick with which the team is being beaten for their unwillingness to supply Red Bull with engines, since it is Ecclestone’s Formula One Management that controls the pictures.
However Niki Lauda and the head of Mercedes motorsports, Toto Wollf, have both denied they believe that to be the case. Ecclestone passed it off over the weekend as a factor of fans wanting to see more overtaking – which is happening further down the field. A perfectly reasonable argument but perhaps not to the extent that the leader is almost being ignored. Spotting the silver arrow on Sunday was a rare occurrence indeed. Hamilton can take the title at the next round in Austin. If the cameras remain shy of that performance, Lauda and Wolff may be less convinced.
