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Russia is the next stop of the 2020 Formula 1 season, where in free practice we achieved what we could hope for: clearly the two Mercedes were the fastest, and behind them we could expect the battles of Red Bull, Renault, McLaren and Racing. Point.
George Russell started the tour with the Russian Grand Prix timekeeper, but only reached one installation round. The first circle measured was named Valtteri Bottas in cloudy weather conditions.
At the beginning of Q1, Bottas took the lead, followed by Pérez, Sainz, Leclerc and Gasly. Soon after, Hamilton moved up in second place, and before the final laps of Q1, Ocon, Raikkonen, Giovinazzi, Grosjean and Latifi were at the elimination spot, with the latter not even having a measured rank.
There was only a minute left on the first leg of the clock when Räikkönen stepped aside with Alfa, meaning it was the first safe abandonment. Later in the replay, it turned out that the Finn spun, thus missing a fast lap at the end of Q1.
Finally, to a little surprise, Daniil Kvjat was third behind the two Mercedes, while Grosjean, Giovinazzi, Magnussen, Latifi, Räikkönen said goodbye to all five. The two Ferraris occupied the last two places to advance.
In Q2, Ferraris and Mercedes immediately took to the track, then Hamilton took the lead with a lap of 1: 32.0, but didn’t stay there for long, canceling his lap as he exited the track on his fastest lap with the four wheels.
Therefore, Ricciardo “inherited” the first place, followed by Sainz, Pérez, Bottas and Norris, and the order of those who took the place of descent was Albon, Stroll, Russell, Vettel, Hamilton. The two Mercedes also started at the end of Q2.
Bottas raced for second on the middle tires long enough, but Hamilton couldn’t finish his lap when Vettel wrecked his car. Fortunately, only the car was damaged, the driver was not, but the red flag section was unavoidable.
As training progressed, there were only 2 minutes 15 seconds left, so the drivers, including Albon and Hamilton, who were in elimination position, had to put in an effort.
After Stroll was returned to the garage, he had another fixed abandonment alongside Vettel, and Hamilton had to wake up to get to the measured lap on time. The line was led by the two Red Bulls, while Hamilton was far behind them. Finally, Sainz and Perez couldn’t start their turn, but Hamilton did.
Ultimately, Ricciardo ran the fastest (valid) lap of Q2, with Leclerc, Kvjat, Stroll, Russell and Vettel among the relegers. Only Verstappen and Bottas could use medium tires, which means the two Mercedes will have different tire tactics tomorrow. Hamilton advanced in fourth place on soft.
Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari SF1000
Photo by Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
In Q3, the two Mercedes, the two Red Bulls, the two McLaren, the two Renault and Pérez and Gasly could compete for the best possible classification. After completing the first laps, Hamilton, Bottas, Verstappen, Ricciardo, Pérez, Sainz, Ocon, Albon, Gasly, Norris were in order. The six-time world champion had a huge lead over his teammate of almost 8 tenths of a second.
Bottas was able to improve on his last lap, but so was Hamilton, so he finally beat the Finn by 652 milliseconds. With that Bottas didn’t even get second place, Verstappen beat him, while Perez was fourth, Ricciardo was fifth, and next order was Sainz, Ocon, Norris, Gasly, Albon.
The time trial is not even reassuring for Hamilton, who, along with 3 of his teammates Latif, Grosjean and Magnussen, were called up before the judges for ignoring the buoys deployed at Bend 2.
A 10 minute recap of the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours, which turned out to be quite a twist and ended with a victory for the eighth Toyota.
