Hamilton leads one-two for new champions Mercedes

2014 Russian Grand Prix summary

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Lewis Hamilton won the first Russian Grand Prix and sealed the constructors’ championship title for Mercedes.

Team mate Nico Rosberg ensured the team could celebrate their title with a one-two finish, but only after recovering from a mistake. Rosberg locked his tyres at the first corner and had to pit for fresh tyres at the end of lap one.

He was able to get to the end of the race without a further pit stop on a day when tyre degradation was extremely low. Rosberg passed Valtteri Bottas for second place, and the Williams driver joined the Mercedes pair on the podium.

The McLaren drivers took fourth and fifth places ahead of Fernando Alonso, who was delayed by a shambolic Ferrari pit stop.

Sergio Perez took the final point for tenth under pressure from Felipe Massa and Nico Hulkenberg.

Having started from a best-ever fifth place, home driver Daniil Kvyat dropped out of the points places and came in 14th.

Max Chilton, driving the only Marussia, was the race’s first retirement after he reported a problem on the front-left of his car.

2014 Russian Grand Prix

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Image © Daimler/Hoch Zwei

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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28 comments on “Hamilton leads one-two for new champions Mercedes”

  1. Keith its wrong, Putin won the race because he said so :)

  2. It was the lowest tyre degradation from the Italian GP in 2010. But it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because drivers could push and enjoy. Blame circuit for boring race.

    1. From what I heard the GP2 was good so why blame the track?

      1. @trublu Because it is in Russia, because HT designed it, because other nonsense reasons.

        GP3 and GP2 delivered very fun races to watch. Pirelli chose poorly, I hardly see how the track lay-out has anything to do with that. If there is a party to ‘blame’ for the average race it is Pirelli. I am using blame cautiously as they had very little data.

        1. petebaldwin (@)
          12th October 2014, 14:13

          I’ll tell you. Turn 1 and 2 is the main overtaking spot. In order to make a move stick there, you have to push the other car off the track or you get a collision as shown many times today. There is no way to defend or pass around the outside – Sutil tried and it doesn’t work.

          The rest is just a sequence of similar corners that all look the same and don’t really allow for close racing.

          You can blame the Pirelli tyres but why is the track so much easier on tyres than the rest? For most of the race, people kept saying “Hamilton is just cruising” and then he’d put in a FLAP!

          The drivers have even said themselves, it’s similar to Abu Dhabi and Valancia. Neither had Putin so it’s nothing to do with him but they are both crap as well and don’t assist good racing.

      2. GP2 have spec cars, so performance is more or less uniform.
        But with F1’s performance disparity, there was not much racing.

    2. Seriously? The problem with Pirelli tyres is that even if they are durable, drivers don’t push. They just try to drive as slow as possible to make sure there’s no lock-ups. Look at how Lewis was coasting around. 1-stop races ever since Pirelli began to supply F1 are just horrible. Don’t blame the track too much. Gp2 races were good.

  3. Great line from Martin Brundle: ” I think Nico with his square tyres will have to give that place back”. Not sure why but I found that funny.

    1. He pointed out Rosberg will have to give place back and magically he did,
      then he said Rosberg will have to pit and magically he did,
      if he had said Rosberg will have to retire then that might have happened too, because Brundle said do. LOL
      Good commentating.

  4. I’ll act like it was unexpected. I mean, the designers/engineers did a very good job. Sadly the constructors (for P1) hasn’t been exciting since, uuh…?

    So now it’s just waiting for Hamilton to win the next few races and crown himself double champ and we can forget this season (except for some great races) in which Rosberg still never beat Hamilton except for in Monaco….

  5. How many times has Rosberg thrown away a potential victory through his own mistake this season? Today was another one, so frustrating.

    1. The fact that he could still recover and end up P2 by a very comfortable margin says enough about Merc’s dominance this season as well.

      1. It’s as I’ve seen someone say, they could use this car for next year’s championship and still win it.

    2. You really think Ham was pushing lol? I agree though Ros would have been hard to overtake it is Rosberg’s own fault though. Hamilton needs a win and 2 seconds and he will be champion. Could be crucial.

    3. Rosberg was very lucky that tyre deg was non existent on this track. 18 points wasn’t a just reward for that mistake

      1. Yes the tyres distorted the result or the standard race progression we have become used to. It also makes one question why Massa was stopped so early and was doing a two stop strategy.

  6. Jonathan Sarginson
    12th October 2014, 14:12

    …yawn!..the Fuji 6hr earlier in the day was far more exciting.

  7. Not sure how bernie can claim the race has nothing to do with politics, when FOM cut 3 or 4 times to him greeting putin and then getting chummy in stands. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t remember that happening during a race in recent years, maybe before or after but not during.

    1. Maybe because not many presidents come at the races? You think they wouldn’t have shown Obama if he came to watch the race? Or the queen?

      1. @wackyracer

        I would love the Queen to visit Silverstone!

  8. Daniel (@collettdumbletonhall)
    12th October 2014, 14:25

    Bottas looked very uncomfortable on that podium. Couldn’t tell too easily as someone was talking to me but did Bottas also avoid shaking hands with Putin before the podium. Might have just been my imagination.

    1. Bottas shook his hand straight away as did Rosberg, Lewis walked straight past him when they first entered the room – I don’t think he saw him, he shook his hand a few minutes later when he had finished cooling down and doing his hair.

      I still think this track has the potential for good racing with the right tyres, there are quite a few overtaking spots but people being able to run flat out with no degredation just took us back to bridgestone days where we saw hardly any overtaking.

  9. Bottas shook Putin hand early in the cooling down room.
    nothing wrong with that. after all Sochi is in Putin country.. Russia.

  10. Great result for McLaren!

    Jenson was faultless all weekend, wished he could nab that podium!
    And, my goodness, I blinked and Kevin gained so many places at the start. Good recovery from him.

  11. So stewards are not biast then? Clearly today shows it, Sutil did not have to pit due to the contact and their way down field Gro gets a pen. Ros wrecks Hamilton’s race and no penalty how laughable was that Pen for Gro?

    1. Those are a JOKE, like not calling safety car in Germany because it was gonna benefit Lewis.

      They preferred to risk Marshall’s lives and have them running in track.

    2. Nothing against a good conspiracy theory, but I’m fairly sure it comes down to being on the same team: Mercedes aren’t going to complain even if they thought Rosberg deliberately took out Hamilton. Less points for them. Same at Monaco. If they were from different teams – Mercedes and Ferrari, say – you can bet there would have been a complaint (and a penalty for the non-Ferrari driver).

      1. They don’t need a complain to investigate an incident.

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