Motorsport journalist and podcaster
Valtteri Bottas has taken an easy win in Russia after polesitter Lewis Hamilton was slapped with two penalties on his way to the grid.
Championship leader Hamilton, who was targeting a record-equalling 91st Formula One victory in Sochi, made two practice starts outside the designated area in the pit lane before taking his place for the start of the race.
The stewards handed him two five-second penalties on safety grounds for the errors, effectively wiping him out of victory contention.
Lewis Hamilton is on pole to match Michael Schumacher’s record 91 Formula One victories, but his route to the front row was as tortuous as his path to the top step is shaping up to be.
The defining lap of Hamilton’s qualifying wasn’t his new track record to take pole, it was his first flying lap of Q2. The Briton was shod with the medium tyre, as was teammate Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, to set it as his race-starting compound after the soft proved delicate in the Sochi heat.
Mercedes comfortably had the pace to run the yellow tyre in Q2, and Hamilton duly set a competitive time, but his lap was deleted for exceeding track limits out of the last turn.
Lewis Hamilton will have a chance to equal Michael Schumacher’s record 91 Formula 1 victories from pole position at the Russian Grand Prix after crushing the opposition in qualifying.
Hamilton was more than half a second quicker than Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen in second and a dispiriting 0.652 seconds faster than teammate Valtteri Bottas, who will start third.
The Briton’s lap time of 1 minute 31.304 seconds was also a new track record for the Sochi Autodrom.
Lewis Hamilton will seek to equal Michael Schumacher’s record 91 victories when he starts from pole position at the Russian Grand Prix after dominating qualifying in Sochi.
Hamilton’s time of 1m31.304s was a new track record and put him more than half a second quicker than the rest of the field.
But the Briton didn’t have things all his own way. A red flag for a Sebastian Vettel crash in Q2 put him at risk of missing the top-10 shootout after his only representative lap of the session had been deleted for exceeding track limits.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton underscored Mercedes’s stranglehold on the field ahead of qualifying with a dominant display in final practice at the Russian Grand Prix.
The Briton’s time of 1m33.279s was 0.776 seconds quicker than teammate Valtteri Bottas and 0.817s quicker than McLaren’s Carlos Sainz.
Bottas’s best lap was compromised by traffic, after which he wasn’t allowed to access his more powerful engine modes to compensate, while Sainz’s lap was set less than 10 minutes before the end of the session when the circuit appeared to be coming back towards the drivers thanks to cloud cover cooling surface temperatures.
Continue reading on RACER