Lewis Hamilton has won the 2018 Russian Grand Prix for Mercedes, with team-mate Valtteri Bottas making it a 1-2 for the team, however, this result is not without controversy, even if nothing illegal was done. Sebastian Vettel completed the podium, finishing in third place for Ferrari, and has now seen his deficit to Lewis Hamilton grow to 50 points in the World Championship. At the start, Bottas got away well from pole and led going into turn 2. Hamilton was a little bit slow off the line, and actually Vettel did pull alongside him at one point on the straight, but Hamilton held his second place, with Vettel in third and Kimi Raikkonen in fourth. Max Verstappen, meanwhile, in the Red Bull, was already up into 13th place by the end of lap 1 having started from 19th place, and he moved up into 5th place by lap 8 after some impressive overtakes in the process. The driver he overtook for fifth, Charles Leclerc, made an impressive move to earn the position on lap 2 of the race to get past Danish driver Kevin Magnussen. Toro Rosso drivers Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley suffered spins, and were forced to both retire due to technical issues with their cars by the end of lap 6, seemingly issues with the brakes.
Bottas was the first of the front running drivers to pit, doing so on lap 12 and switching onto a set of the soft tyres. Vettel followed suit a lap later and also took a set of softs, re-emerging behind Bottas once again. Hamilton pitted on the next lap, but re-emerged behind both Bottas and Vettel after arguably staying out one lap too long on his set of ultra-softs, much to Hamilton's frustration. Hamilton, however, managed to get back past Vettel on lap 17 after a brilliant overtake on the German. Just before the overtake, however, Vettel defended his position very aggressively and arguably changed direction twice when doing so, which is against the rules - Hamilton certainly felt that it was the case. The incident was investigated, and, as is usual for Vettel, he got away with no further action against him, in all probability, if it were any other driver, a penalty would certainly have been given. Raikkonen then himself pitted on lap 19. With the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers having all pitted, this meant that Verstappen, the birthday boy, was leading the race having not yet stopped, although he was on the soft tyres rather than the ultra-softs with which the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers started the race on.
On lap 26, arguably the key moment and biggest talking point of the race occurred, as Bottas was told to let Hamilton past him for second (which was in effect first if you consider that Verstappen was still yet to make his pitstop), with Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles saying to Bottas on team radio, "We had a risk with Lewis who has a small blister. I had to do this to make sure we secure this, I understand." after Bottas was rather frustrated with the team's decision.
Daniel Ricciardo, who by now was running in sixth place after starting all the way down in 18th place, pitted on lap 40 for a set of ultra-softs (he did start on the softs just like his team-mate Verstappen) and changed also his front wing after he had suffered some damage. Verstappen himself pitted from the lead on lap 43 and he too switched onto a set of ultra-soft tyres, re-emerging in fifth place, and, despite having substantially fresher (as well as grippier) tyres than Kimi Raikkonen, he was unable to really close the gap to the Finn.
Hamilton crossed the line at the end of lap 53 to take the victory, his third in Sochi to maintain Mercedes' 100% win rate at this track, as well as earning his 70th career victory, with team-mate Bottas crossing the line in second to make it Mercedes' third 1-2 finish of the season, whilst Vettel crossed the line in third, finishing 7.4 seconds behind Hamilton. With this win, Hamilton can now afford to finish third in four of the five races, and finish second in the other, and would still be World Champion even if Vettel were to win every single race from now until the end of the season. Hamilton was not overly joyed by his victory and thanked Bottas for his co-operation during the race, saying in the post-race press conference: "When I got the call that said Valtteri is going to let me past, I wanted them to tell him to speed up, as I had Sebastian on my tail and he was getting quite close. "Passing him did not feel good, and I didn’t know what was planned for the end - I was waiting for some news or something but I knew the team wanted it to end that way."It’s hard to find the right words, it's never in my whole life been the way I wanted to win a race. There's not many team-mates who would do something like that."
Personal opinion on Mercedes' decision to impose team orders:
I, personally, as a Formula 1 fan do not really like the concept of team orders and would prefer if the team let their two drivers race, despite the risks associated with that approach. However, given that it is Hamilton and not Bottas going for the World Championship, I can understand why the decision was taken in order to maximise Hamilton's advantage to Vettel. I am sure that it was an extremely tough decision for the team to take and Toto Wolff admitted. After all, as much as I am not a fan of team orders whatsoever, it is a team game as well and nobody is bigger than the team.
I must commend Bottas' handling of the whole situation - Bottas, although he was evidently not happy with the instruction, obeyed team orders and was extremely professional, I believe that very few drivers would have acted in the same way as the Finn did. I also believe that Hamilton was not too keen about it, even though it did mean he won the race, and if you watched the podium celebrations, Hamilton actually offered to hand his winning trophy to Bottas, which was definitely a very sporting gesture, even if Bottas refused it - which, in a way, I do understand on his part, I firmly believe that he did that not due to him being angry at Hamilton, but because Hamilton ultimately was the driver who came first, and throughout the podium celebrations I feel that Bottas showed absolute class.
Classification: Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes
Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari
Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer Charles Leclerc - Sauber-Ferrari
Kevin Magnussen - Haas-Ferrari
Esteban Ocon - Racing Point Force India-Mercedes
Sergio Perez - Racing Point Force India-Mercedes
Romain Grosjean - Haas-Ferrari
Nico Hulkenberg - Renault
Marcus Ericsson - Sauber-Ferrari
Fernando Alonso - McLaren-Renault
Lance Stroll - Williams-Mercedes
Stoffel Vandoorne - McLaren-Renault
Carlos Sainz - Renault
Sergey Sirotkin - Williams-Mercedes
Did not finish the race and therefore not classified: Pierre Gasly, Brendon Hartley
World Championship classification: Lewis Hamilton - 306 points
Sebastian Vettel - 256 points
Valtteri Bottas - 189 points
Kimi Raikkonen - 186 points
Max Verstappen - 158 points
Daniel Ricciardo - 134 points
Kevin Magnussen - 53 points
Nico Hulkenberg - 53 points
Fernando Alonso - 50 points
Sergio Perez - 47 points
Esteban Ocon - 47 points
Carlos Sainz - 38 points
Pierre Gasly - 28 points
Romain Grosjean - 27 points
Charles Leclerc - 21 points
Stoffel Vandoorne - 8 points
Lance Stroll - 6 points
Marcus Ericsson - 6 points
Brendon Hartley - 2 points
Sergey Sirotkin - 1 point
Constructors' Championship classification: Mercedes - 495 points
Ferrari - 442 points
Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer - 292 points
Renault - 91 points
Haas-Ferrari - 80 points
McLaren-Renault - 58 points
Racing Point Force India-Mercedes - 35 points
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda - 30 points
Sauber-Ferrari - 27 points
Williams-Mercedes - 7 points