@LewisHamilton clinches 100th #F1-career victory in wet and wild #RussianGP.

Hamilton Russian GP victory – Lewis Hamilton claimed his 100^th Formula 1 career victory in a rain-hit ending Russian GP, which caused heartbreak for McLaren’s Lando Norris with championship-rival Max Verstappen finishing second for Red Bull and Carlos Sainz third for Ferrari.

 

 

McLaren’s Norris wound up seventh after attempting to remain on slicks when Hamilton, who pushed up the order in the Grand Prix’s second half before getting stuck behind his fellow British-compatriot ahead of the rain arriving in the final tours, stopped for intermediates.

 

Norris is also currently under investigation from race officials for crossing the pit-lane entry line when he did eventually pit for the wet rubber, by which Hamilton swept passed to grab first place.

 

When the 53 lap Russian GP began, pole-sitter Norris fears of losing the lead at the turn two right hand corner were realised as, although he made a solid getaway off the line, his slipstream gave a crucial advantage to those behind him.

 

 

This worked out perfectly for Ferrari’s Sainz as he bounced back from a poor start and Williams Racing’s George Russell moved alongside from third, by sitting behind Norris and then gained ground massively as the two British drivers hit a hole in the air down to the initial braking zone.

 

Then Sainz swept in-front of Russell and to the outside of Norris, taking the lead despite suffering a lock-up to his front-eft as the field arrived at the second corner.

 

Sainz managed to keep on track and did not have to go around the bollards in the run-off area, which Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso, rejoining alongside Russell before losing ground to the fast-starting Aston Martin of Lance Stroll.

 

At the end of the opening tour, Sainz was out of DRS range from Norris, with Russell in third place and then rapidly fell back from the McLaren and leading a train of cars down to Hamilton in sixth – the world champion dropped down the order, after being boxed at the start after momentarily running alongside Sainz on the run-off of the line and before the Ferrari benefitted from Norris’s slipstream.

 

Sainz and Norris were able to run in the 1:41’s over the opening few laps, with Russell dropping back by almost a second per tour, with the threat of rain teams were predicting looming, but did not interrupt proceedings at this stage.

 

The two leaders pulled clear, with Sainz running comfortably ahead of Norris until the end of the opening ten laps, which saw the McLaren driver start to pressure the Spaniard.

 

After small attacks at the second corner on lap 10 and 11, Norris briefly held off, describing to his front-left to the team as “completely gone”, before the Briton started closing in again on the Ferrari on lap 13 and took the lead with DRS assistance down the back straight to move ahead on the outside line into the right-hand turn 12.

 

Ferrari then brought Sainz in at the end of the following tour, with the Spaniard emerging in-front of Stroll, who had triggered the initial round of pit-stops with an undercut on Russell by coming in for a set of C3 white side-walled harder compounds.

 

Russell came in to cover Stroll, but emerged behind the Aston Martin, which, although the undercut was strong, could not get by Sainz too despite a slow switch to the Ferrari’s left-rear.

 

The three drivers ran in clear air behind Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas, who was passed by Verstappen as they and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made stable progress through the field after starting at the back of the grid due for changing engines – the Monegasque-youngster gaining six places on the opening lap.

 

The early stops for Sainz, Stroll and Russell meant Ricciardo, Hamilton and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez had no choice but to remain out on track to avoid coming out behind them again, with Norris also remaining in the lead – the Briton extending his gap over his McLaren team-mate from eight seconds to 12 by the time Daniel Ricciardo stopped on the 22^nd lap.

 

The graining to the tyres the drivers – including race-leader Norris – had reported started clearing up, with the McLaren driver staying out until the 28^th lap, two tours after Mercedes pitted Hamilton, now Norris’s main threat after Ricciardo’s stop went disastrous due to a slow front-left change, to swap mediums to hards.

 

Norris emerged after making the same compound switch in a net first place, with Hamilton in the pack making his way through the drivers that stopped earlier – Stroll and then Sainz – also AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly who was yet to pit.

 

This setup an eight second gap to Norris’s net-P1 with 22 tours remaining, Perez, Alonso and Leclerc lead the race at this stage of proceedings as they ran long on the harder tyres, they and Gasly started the Grand Prix on.

 

As the hard tyre-starting drivers came in to stop in-front of Norris and Hamilton – both who had passed Leclerc on track – with the Mercedes cutting into the McLaren’s gap with a string of fastest laps.

 

With 15 laps remaining, Norris’s lead was 1.7 seconds but there Hamilton’s charged stopped.

 

Norris posted the fastest lap with DRS assistance as he lapped Haas F1 Team’s Nikita Mazepin on the back straight at lap 40, and there he matched Hamilton in the high 1:37 range, which kept the gap stable.

 

Attention turned to the threat of hitting the Sochi Autodrom in the closing stages, with droplets starting to fall on lap 42, but getting worse four laps later.

 

The rain got heavier initially at the turn five-seven sequence at the top of Sochi layout, with Norris at first coping better than Hamilton and pulled away from the Mercedes, which finally reached DRS range on lap 48.

 

But as the conditions worsened, Norris rejected McLaren’s call to stop for inters on lap 49, opting to try and hold on with the slicks, whilst Hamilton came in for the green-marked intermediate rubber.

 

The decision soon turned to dust for Norris as turns three-seven were soaking wet, with the rain eventually making the entire Sochi Autodrom slippery all around.

 

Hamilton ate into the McLaren’s lead and took P1 when Norris slipped off at the fifth corner on lap 51, at the end of which the Briton finally pitted.

 

With Hamilton clear in-front to clinch his milestone 100^th victory at the Russian GP, the positions behind changed dramatically.

 

Sainz, who had found his way back in a high-running position despite his early stop as slow dry weather pit-stops hampered several drivers, Ricciardo and Verstappen were among the first to pit for the intermediates.

 

Verstappen used his to move up the order and ran clear of Sainz by the end – the Red Bull driver’s fortunes changing dramatically after his early push had been impeded when he emerged from his pit-stop in a mixed pack of early-stoppers and long-running drivers.

 

Verstappen finished 53.271 seconds adrift of Hamilton as the Driver’s Championship swung back in the latter’s favour by two points, with Sainz taking the final podium place – the Ferrari driver too benefitted by in the rain as Perez, who pitted for intermediates later than most, and Ricciardo jumped him before it arrived.

 

Ricciardo finished fifth and in-front of Bottas, another driver who came through the field in the late wet drama having been stuck in the pack for most of the Grand Prix.

 

Bottas, Alfa Romeo Racing’s Kimi Raikkonen and Russell were the first to stop for inters, and they all gained significantly in the closing stages.

 

Raikkonen was eighth and ahead of Perez, with Russell, who was holding on in tenth place even as the long runners slotted in around him following his early pit-stop, taking the final point on offer in the rain.

 

Then were the Aston Martin pairing of Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, who tangled twice as the rain got heavier – and Gasly who finished 13^th.

 

Stroll and Gasly are also currently under investigation for a clash at the second corner in the late drama.

 

Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon came home in 14^th and ahead of Ferrari’s Leclerc who was 15^th and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi who ended the Grand Prix 16^th.

 

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Haas F1 Team’s Mazepin brought up the rear.

 

The only drivers not to finish were Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi, who retired as the rain arrived and Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher, who was brought in after 22 laps due to a hydraulics leak on his VF-21 racer.

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2021 Russian GP – The Top Three

 

 

2021 Russian GP Winner – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W12 EQ Performance:

“It’s taken a long time to get to 100 and at times, I wasn’t sure it would come. Lando did such an amazing job, he had incredible pace. It was bittersweet to see my old team ahead. The team made a great call right at the end, I didn’t want to let Lando go but again I didn’t know what the weather was doing”

 

2^nd Place – Max Verstappen, #33, Red Bull Racing-Honda, RB16B:

“It was pretty tricky on the in-lap to make the call for inters, it was really slippery. If we’d have gone one lap earlier, you’d have destroyed the inters. The race itself was not very easy, luckily with the rain, it helped us to make that last jump. With the penalty we had, to lose only one spot basically – when i woke up, I definitely didn’t expect this result.”

 

3^rd Place – Carlos Sainz, #55, Scuderia Ferrari, SF21:

“I got round Lando into Turn 2, but then graining came and we had to go early onto the hard. The rain came at the right time as my hard tyres were going away. We boxed at exactly the right time and managed to get back onto the podium.”

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Formula 1 VTB Russian Grand Prix 2021 Race Results Classification (53 Laps)

 

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	53	1:30:41.001	25
2	33	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING HONDA	53	+53.271s	18
3	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	53	+62.475s	15
4	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	53	+65.607s	12
5	77	Valtteri Bottas	MERCEDES	53	+67.533s	10
6	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	53	+81.321s	8
7	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	53	+87.224s	7
8	7	Kimi Räikkönen	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	53	+88.955s	4
9	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING HONDA	53	+90.076s	2
10	63	George Russell	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	53	+100.551s	1
11	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	53	+106.198s	0
12	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	52	+1 lap	0
13	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI HONDA	52	+1 lap	0
14	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	52	+1 lap	0
15	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	52	+1 lap	0
16	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	52	+1 lap	0
17	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI HONDA	52	+1 lap	0
18	9	Nikita Mazepin	HAAS FERRARI	51	+2 laps	0
19	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	47	DNF	0
NC	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	32	DNF	0

 

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2021/races/1077/russia/race-result.html

 

Click here for the Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings

 

Round 16 of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship returns to Intercity Istanbul Park Circuit in Istanbul, Turkey for the Formula 1 Rolex Turkish Grand Prix 2021 from Friday October 8-Sunday October 10.