Hamilton’s century feat at Drama-filled Sochi autodrome

By Malhaar Khaladkar

Lewis Hamilton achieved his 100^th Formula 1 career victory at a drama filled Sochi autodrome- a feat that no driver has achieved before, as Max Verstappen finished P2 from starting last and Carlos Sainz completed the podium. Lando Norris who had lead majority of the race finished in P7 after a strategic error.

London, 26 Sept. 2021: Lewis Hamilton won a formula 1 race for the record 100^th time as he continued Mercedes’ dominance of never being beaten at the Russian Grand Prix since 1913. Max Verstappen finished P2 as he limited his points damage to Hamilton after starting last due to an engine penalty, and former Toro Rosso teammate Carlos Sainz finished in P3, his third podium this season with Ferrari. McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo was classified in P4 ahead of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas in P5 and Alpine’s Fernando Alonso in P6- the Spaniard finishing in the same position he started the race. Lando Norris who looked favorite for McLaren’s consecutive race win eventually finished P7 after the weather interfered and a wrong strategy call to sit out on slick tyres. Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen finished in P8, his best finish of the season as he returned from Covid-19 illness. The second Red Bull of Sergio Perez looked on for a podium but had to settle for P9 after rain came into play. George Russell has scored points in last four out of five races for Williams as he crossed the line in P10.

Lance Stroll finished P11 as he had a coming together with Aston Martin teammate Sebastian Vettel and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, earning himself a 10-second time penalty for his troubles. Vettel finished in P12 and Gasly in P13. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon finished in P14 ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in P15, Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi in P16 and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda in P17. Haas’ Nikita Mazepin was last of the finishers in P18. Williams driver Nicholas Latifi and Haas rookie Mick Schumacher were two retirees from the race.

News broke before the race that Bottas would be starting P16 after taking another engine penalty with Leclerc and Verstappen already starting P19 and P20 respectively due to taking new engines outside of their allocation. There was a 70% chance of rain during the start of the race, but it did not materialise.

Norris starting from pole got good start, but Sainz caught the McLaren’s slipstream and was ahead at braking zone of turn 2. Behind Hamilton lost positions as he fell to P7 from P4. Russell maintained his position in P3. Stroll had an amazing start leapfrogging to P4 from P7. At the back of the grid Verstappen made up a couple of positions, as did Bottas while Leclerc jumped from P19 to P12.

Hamilton dispatched Alonso but got stuck behind the Mercedes powered DRS train of Russell, Stroll and Ricciardo. Behind, Verstappen passed Bottas for P14 with the Finn barely putting up a defense. Sainz was leading with Norris chasing the Ferrari and both were pulling away from Russell. Hamilton who had been the favorite before the start was losing time to the leaders and his chances of victory slimming lap by lap.

The tyres were graining and subsequently losing grip in cold conditions. Aston Martin decided to trigger the undercut with Stroll on lap 12 as he pitted from P4 for a set of hard tyres. Norris caught up to Sainz and passed him for the lead on the inside of turn 12. Russell and Sainz followed suit at the end of lap 13 and 14 respectively. Meanwhile, Hamilton was still held up behind Ricciardo unable to overtake him as the McLaren runs the Mercedes power unit too.

Ricciardo pitted on lap 22 for hard tyres, releasing Hamilton into free air who was around 12 seconds behind Norris. After consecutive fastest laps by the Mercedes driver, the team decided to pull in Hamilton for a set of medium tyres and capitalise on Ricciardo’s slow pit stop. Hamilton emerged behind Stroll and Gasly, dispatching them quickly by lap 31. Meanwhile Norris responded to Hamilton and pitted on lap 28, emerging in P4 behind yet to pit Leclerc, Alonso and Perez. Verstappen had pitted on the same lap as his championship rival, albeit for medium tyres but was stuck behind Ricciardo.

Leclerc pitted on lap 35 with Alonso and Perez following him in on lap 37. This meant that Norris lead the race with Hamilton some 8 seconds behind and rapidly catching. The tension built up as Hamilton was around a second behind Norris for consecutive laps. With five laps remaining the heavens opened up, andumbrellas and raincoats came out with the majority of rain focused around turn 5 and 7. Both Norris and Hamilton stayed out resisting the call to pit for intermediate tyres. As the rain worsened Mercedes were adamant to pit Hamilton and the Briton listened, pitting on lap 49. He was now around 25 seconds behind Norris but the gap shrinking rapidly has the track was properly wet. It was heartbreak for Norris as he decided to stay out on slick tyres on a wet track and slid off of it on the penultimate lap with Hamilton taking the lead. Norris limped back to pits for inters as he could only manage P7 in the end.

It was gutting for the young Briton, Norris as he almost controlled the race from start to finishonly to lose the lead on the penultimate lap. But the headlines belonged to Hamilton who became the first driver to reach a century of victories and with that retaking the championship lead as Mercedes extended their constructors championship lead too.

Mercedes once again had the fastest car of the grid in Russian but failed to capitalise in qualifying due to weather and partly driver error. Eventually they managed to win thanks to a good strategy call in the dynamic conditions. Even Bottas who was running in P14 before rain arrived, managed to gain nine positions and finish in P5. The German squad are currently leading both championships. Red Bull chose to bite the bullet for Verstappen and take an engine penalty. He achieved the best possible result of P2 with Hamilton winning to limit the damage. It is difficult to judge Red Bull’s pace this weekend due to Verstappen not taking part in qualifying and both cars running in traffic in the race.

McLaren were the best of the rest as Norris managed to pass Sainz’s Ferrari with ease. They even had the pace to hold up both Mercedes and Red Bull behind owing to their straight-line speed and evident by Hamilton being unable to pass Ricciardo and Norris, and Verstappen being caught behind Ricciardo. Strategy error meant they lost the chance to win a second consecutive race. Ferrari showed decent pace as they held a podium position with Sainz before the late rain drama begin. Even with the conditions changing the Italian team kept a cool head and Sainz achieved his fourth podium of the season. Both Alpine and Aston Martin showed good race pace to hold high top 10 positions but ultimately failed to capitalise due to the interference of weather. Only Alonso being able to finish in P6 as both Aston Martin cars and Ocon failed to score points.

AlphaTauri had a mediocre race as both cars finished outside of points. Gasly had a chance to finish in points as the conditions changed but entanglement with Stroll meant that his chances were all but over of scoring points. Alfa Romeo capitalised on the weather as they got the season’s best finish of P8 with Raikkonen. Williams and Russell scoredpoints in four races out of five. Arguable the Grove squad should have scored higher points as Russell started from P3 but a wrong strategy call meant he was stuck in traffic after the first round of pitstops. Both Haas cars had their highest starting positions of the season owing to a lot of grid penalties but were unable to challenge for points.

Saturday’s Qualifying results were:

Note – Verstappen penalised 3 grid places for causing a collision at the previous round. Leclerc, Verstappen and Latifi required to start from the back of the grid for use of additional power unit elements. Bottas penalised 15 grid places for use of additional power unit elements. Giovinazzi penalised 5 grid places for an unscheduled gearbox change.