Bottas steals win in Sochi after needless penalty by Hamilton relegates him to P3; Red Bull’s Verstappen splits the Silver Arrows in P2

A funny thing happened on the way to Lewis Hamilton’s coronation as winner of the Russian Grand Prix and preemptive favorite for the 2020 Drivers’ Championship. Before the race even started Hamilton and his Mercedes team made another crucial error in judgment that put them afoul of the stewards and led directly to a penalized infraction with race ruining results, not dissimilar to what happened two races ago at Monza when Hamilton foolishly entered a closed pit lane if less severe in outcome. On Sunday at Sochi Autodrom on the coast of the Black Sea it was practicing his starts outside the acceptable areas for doing so that led to Lewis’ undoing. So despite starting from pole and then holding off his onrushing teammate Valtteri Bottas to lead the opening lap Hamilton would very shortly be assessed two separate 5-second time penalties for two distinct illegal pre-race practice starts. Interestingly, the penalties were handed down directly after a Safety Car period brought out when both McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and Racing Point’s Lance Stroll crashed out on the opening lap in unrelated shunts. But the penalty was announced on Lap 7, two laps after the end of the SC, so the Mercedes brain trust had to go into overdrive trying to game out recovery strategies for their points-leading driver under Green Flag conditions, especially after he also had to start on the undesirable Soft Pirelli tires due to a very tense and scrambled qualifying effort on Saturday. But in the end Hamilton did nothing more than stay out for a few more laps and try to extend his lead over Bottas as best he could.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

Despite his protestations about wanting to prolong his first stint, the team finally succeeded in getting Hamilton to go to the pits for fresh rubber at the end of Lap 16, where he swapped the fragile Softs for a pair of Hard compound tires that would have to make it till the end of this 53-lap contest. Bottas then inherited a lead that he would never relinquish, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, whom Bottas passed skillfully for P2 when the lights went out to start the race, got that position back. Hamilton emerged way down in P11. Still complaining bitterly about both the team’s strategy call and the perceived unfairness of the penalties, Hamilton nonetheless began to regain ground almost immediately as the drivers in front of him began to cycle in for their own pit stops, which the Mercedes pit wall had obviously factored in to their decision on when to pit Hamilton in the first place. By Lap 19 he passed the pokey Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel for P7 and by Lap 21 he had made it all the way back to P5. After Vettel’s stablemate Charles Leclerc pitted on Lap 29 and AlphaTauri’s Daniil Kvyat made his stop on Lap 31 that elevated Hamilton into the third place spot he was destined to hold onto for the remainder of the contest. When Bottas crossed the line for the easy if opportunistic victory it put him eleven points to the good over Hamilton on the day, as the Finn also set the fastest lap of the race for the bonus point to take the full 26 on offer. That closed the gap between the two Silver Arrows intra-team rivals to 44 points in the Drivers’ standings with seven more scheduled rounds currently remaining on the calendar. Bottas’s unwillingness to roll over and Hamilton’s own missteps have suddenly made things a lot more interesting in what was looking like a cakewalk for the English six-time Champion. But counting on Hamilton making mistakes every weekend seems like anything but a sure bet and Bottas is going to have to beat the champ mano-a-mano and wheel-to-wheel if he wants to really put a scare into Lewis and make a serious run at his first title.

Verstappen held on to that P2 after a solid if lonely all round drive at Sochi, a strong podium finish which must have felt even sweeter than usual after a two-race points drought for the talented Dutchman. His Red Bull teammate Alexander Albon was less impressive, which is becoming the norm, as the young Thai driver could only manage the final point down in P10 after having to fight far too hard for that meager reward all race long. Racing Point’s Sergio Perez was the best of the rest with a splendid P4 effort, likely giving the team second thoughts about their decision to part ways with the steady Mexican pilot at the end of the season. Daniel Ricciardo led out a good day for Renault with a P5 finish even after being assessed a 5-second penalty of his own for redoing the track incorrectly while overcooking a position swap with his teammate, Esteban Ocon. Ocon held on with old tires to finish P7. Those two sandwiched Ferrari’s Leclerc, who drove wonderfully well in a slow ride to take a P6 finish, salvaging something for the Scuderia on a day when their second driver Vettel was once again nowhere in the race. The German four-time champ came home a dismal P13 in what has been pretty much an unrelentingly dismal campaign for him. The Russian Kvyat finished a solid P8 in front of his countrymen and his AlphaTauri teammate Pierre Gasly salvaged P9 after an ill-advised late second pit stop during a brief Virtual Safety Car that simply didn’t last long enough to make that move pay off.

Top10 finishers of the Russian GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in two weeks’ time, as Formula 1 returns to the legendary Nürburgring for the fist time since 2013. By then, Hamilton should be feeling like a caged animal looking for redemption and vengeance while Bottas will be looking to keep his unexpected momentum going and keep sticking it to his vociferous critics. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!