Russian Grand Prix: A glimmer of hope for Bottas?

The much awaited Russian Grand Prix has come to a close after 3 exciting days of high speed Formula One racing. The P1 AND P2 practice sessions which were held earlier on Friday were dominated by Valtteri Bottas while Lewis seemed to struggle. However Hamilton came to his own in P3, edging out Bottas for the top spot.

 As the practice sessions came to an end, it was time for qualifying. As was expected Lewis Hamilton came through with yet another pole position while the young talent that is Max Verstappen denied a front row lockout for the Mercedes leaving Bottas content with a 3rd place start. Sergio Perez did remarkably well for Racing Point turning up 4^th fastest at the end of qualifying. The Ferraris however continued to disappoint with both the drivers missing out on Q3.

With the starting positions all decided and settled it was time for some real racing at Sochi. The race saw a dramatic start as the safety car had to be brought on at the very 1^st lap of the race as Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll crashed out early on. Esteban Ocon remarkably picked up his pace at the start to move up from 7^th to 4^th in the first few laps. Around 10 laps into the race Lewis Hamilton was slapped with 2 five second violations which led to him falling all the way down the order to 10^th place at a point in time. The 6 time world champion seemed livid at losing so many positions but went on to fight his way up to the podium led by Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas who finished P2 and P1 respectively. Sergio Perez impressed everyone holding onto his 4^th place start to get his first top 4 finish this season. It was a good day at the office for Renault as well as Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon finished P5 and P7, they were split in the middle by Charles Leclerc fighting his way to P6 in a Ferrari which just hasn’t looked in shape this season. An interesting midfield battle emerged between Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris where Gasly came out on top at P9 right behind his teammate Danil Kvyat who picked up 4 impressive points.

That was all from Sochi, for round 11 of the Formula One World Championship the teams move onwards to Germany which will be a home race for Mercedes as they look to close out the constructor’s championship.