Valtteri Bottas took his maiden victory in Formula One at the Sochi Autodrom on Sunday afternoon after taking the lead from third place om the grid after the lights went out and only losing it when he came in for his one and only pitstop. In doing so Valtteri became the 107th driver to win a race in the Formula One championship, the fifth Fin and secured mercedes 400th podium finish.
It was the most exciting of races it must be said with the only overtaking being that of lapping passed cars, however thw final laps where Sebastian Vettel was slowly catching Bottas made it somewhat exciting, the Ferrari driver unable to make a real challenge for the lead despite being in DRS distance on several occasions. He ended up crossing the line in a close second with teammate Kimi Raikkonen in third.
“We're all so pleased to see Valtteri on the top step of the podium,” said Mercedes man James Allison. “A driver's first win is always very special but especially when it comes like it did this weekend, off the back off some difficult sessions. That makes victory all the sweeter.”
Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton, he was unable to show the same level of competitiveness as his teammate. The three time world champion was constantly being told to back off because his car was getting too hot so even though at times he would close right up on Kimi Raikkonen, he would need to back off once again and allow the car to cool. He eventually crossed the line in a distant fourth place.
" Our happiness is tempered though by the fact that we couldn't get Lewis into a position where he could be properly competitive,” Allison continued. “It's a reminder to us that we have more work to do before we can put a car on the track for both Saturday and Sunday that we know is going to absolutely top rank competitive, which is what we'll need to do in this, such a hard-fought and competitive season.”
Max Verstappen finished fifth for Red Bull, however teammate Daniel Ricciardo was forced to retire early in the race due to overheating rear brakes. This occurred right after a restart at the beginning due to a safety car that was brought out when Romain Grosjean and Jolyon Palmer collided on the opening lap.
"Firstly, congratulations to Valtteri Bottas on his first grand prix victory, a great win for him,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner. “For us, it was a real disappointment to lose Daniel early in the race with a right rear brake issue, straight after the safety car restart. We need to understand exactly what the cause of failure was; the outcome was similar to that which happened with Max in Bahrain but it looks like a different issue, so that needs thorough exploration."
"Max drove a strong race today, he had a good start but then he was in only racing himself in no man's land; putting a significant gap to the cars behind but not being able to keep up with the cars ahead. So, at a circuit that we know doesn't play to our strengths at least we got to our optimum with Max and hopefully in Barcelona we can start making some progress."
Fernando Alonso once again had the race, or should we say non race from hell when his Honda powered McLaren failed to make the start, stopping during the formation lap and causing the first start to be aborted.
“Fernando lost the power from his deployment with the system failure of ERS during the formation lap,” explained Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa. “Although we tried to fix it by rebooting the system while running, we weren't able to recover it. As a result, we had to stop the car out on the track and were unable to start the race. We'll be investigating the cause of the system failure.”
No doubt there will be questions asked back at Maranello as to why the team lost this victory. Both Ferrari's were strong and quick all weekend long and many pundits in the paddock have brought their strategy call to leave Vettel out on track for as long as they did into serious question.
- Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes
- Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari
- Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari
- Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
- Max Verstappen, Red Bull
- Sergio Perez, Force India
- Esteban Ocon, Force India
- Nico Hulkenberg, Renault
- Felipe Massa, Williams
- Carlos Sainz, Toro Rosso
- Lance Stroll, Williams
- Daniil Kvyat, Toro Rosso
- Kevin Magnussen, Haas
- Stoffel Vandoorne, McLaren
- Marcus Ericsson, Sauber
- Pascal Wehrlein, Sauber
