Hamilton coasts to victory in Russia

The first Russian Grand Prix weekend had some edgy moments, some strange moments, a large portion of dull moments in the main event, but it did result in a sublimely perfect performance from Lewis Hamilton whom took his ninth win of the year, his 31^st in total to draw level with Nigel Mansell with the most wins by a British driver.

Lewis was perfect all weekend apart from a minor spin in practice three. He took pole position and despite briefly losing the lead at turn 2 to Nico Rosberg who overshot the corner and had to give the place back he was in control and coasted to victory.

Rosberg brought some entertainment to the race after locking up his front tyres on the opening lap. He had to pit at the end of the first lap, the flat spots from the rubber causing severe vibrations. It dropped him to the back of the pack. It looked like he’d just offered Lewis one hand on the championship, but he remained calm, picked himself up and when told he’d have to make those set of tyres last the rest of the race drove superbly back through the field. It was a mark of how unintentionally conservative Pirelli were. The predicted two stopper was an easy one stop race, perhaps the super-soft instead of the medium might have added the spice of variety.

It almost seemed too easy such was the advantage of the Mercedes in Russia. Both drivers reported no issues with tyre degradation, and Rosberg conserved and pushed at the right times making a number of excellent moves into turn two to come home in second securing the constructors championship for Mercedes.

That championship hasn’t looked in doubt all year, but it’s well deserved, the silver team came into 2014 the best prepared with a superb chassis and the best power unit by far. Former team principal Ross Brawn deserves a lot of the credit for setting them underway to this domination but the team have gone with the direction they were given and maximised it.

The driver’s title is still tough to call despite Hamilton now outscoring Rosberg by nine wins to four and holding a 17 point lead in the championship. In a way I’m glad it was so easy for Rosberg to come back to second as it keeps the title fight more interesting and a slender points gap makes it more likely that double points won’t affect the title before that novelty idea is hopefully dropped for 2015.

But Hamilton is really on a roll now, his second run of four wins this year with just three races to go makes it seem like the momentum he’s created on his side of the garage is unstoppable. It appears Rosberg was too eager to make his point again at the start for which he apologised to the team for, but his comeback drive is to be admired.

The non-Mercedes race

Valtteri Bottas brought Williams back to the closest challenger position with another podium, but could he have had second? He didn’t manage to put up too much of a fight against Rosberg despite being on fresher rubber after making his one and only stop. Rosberg dived through and made an instant gap to Bottas who just couldn’t respond.

I think ideally Williams would have liked to have run Bottas longer but they couldn’t manage the tyres quite as well because despite holding the gap to Hamilton for the first quarter of the race he then fell back dramatically. Still, it was a better race than his team mate Felipe Massa had who suffered a fuel pick up problem in qualifying leaving him starting only 18^th. He was one of the few to employ a two stopper and it left him only 11^th.

Jenson Button was my star of the race. He finished fourth after starting there and despite running third in the opening phase of the race wouldn’t have been able to hold off Rosberg for long. Button was pretty lonely throughout once he’d managed to pull a gap on Fernando Alonso and ran strongly throughout to remind McLaren just what they’d be giving up.

He out-qualified and out-drove team mate Kevin Magnussen who still did a tremendous job to come up from 11^th on the grid to finish fifth. Alonso was well off the pace for Ferrari in sixth, suffering a botched pit stop that cost him several seconds and dropped him behind Magnussen. He still finished ahead of the struggling Red Bull’s, both Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel off the pace all weekend.

Ricciardo started sixth and Vettel tenth, but the current world champion got the jump on the Australian during the first lap and headed the pair. Ricciardo asked the team to get Vettel out of the way before actually dropping away from him. He stopped earlier and got the undercut after Vettel stayed out a lot later. But seventh and eighth is not what the team expect.

Ninth was Kimi Raikkonen who’ll be glad when this season is over and tenth was Sergio Perez, one point for Force India against McLaren’s 22 means they’ve dramatically fallen back in the chase to be a top five constructor.

Esteban Gutierrez had a long first stint and seems the most likely Sauber driver to challenge for points while the most note worthy moment for Lotus’ Romain Grosjean was when he was given a five second stop/go penalty for tapping Adrian Sutil into a spin. He still finished ahead of the other Lotus of Pastor Maldonado.

Toro Rosso were the big disappointments of Russia. Daniil Kvyat was an outstanding fifth in qualifying for his home race. Jean-Eric Vergne was ninth but both dropped dramatically out of the top ten. They had no pace to answer any questions the rest of the field through at them to finish 13^th and 14^th, Vergne ahead of Kvyat.

Caterham retired Kamui Kobayashi for no reason so the Japanese claims which seems a bit odd. The team does have money worries so maybe they’re trying to save parts while Marcus Ericsson continued his revival with another good qualifying before the team let him finish last.

Marussia elected not to run Jules Bianchi’s car but it seems Alexander Rossi will be in the car for his home race in the USA in three weeks. It’s obviously been a tough week for the team and the sport as a whole, Bianchi remains in a critical but stable condition.

So we now head to the USA in three weeks, it’s the home stretch for the title race. Can Lewis be stopped in his march towards glory? It’s looking increasingly unlikely for Rosberg, I think he’s now holding onto the hope that the double points round in Abu Dhabi is going to be a wacky race but he can start closing the gap with a perfect weekend in the USA. Above all I hope in three weeks the Formula 1 grid reforms to good news about Bianchi. #ForzaJules.

all photos taken from autosport.com