After a one week break, F1 was back in action. This time they were in Russia for the FORMULA 1 VTB RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX 2020. Valtteri Bottas won the race, as Lewis Hamilton was handed a 10 second penalty for a pre-race violation.
Lewis Hamilton caught the attention of the stewards before the race for practice starts at the end of the pit lane on his laps to the grid. He performed the practice start outside of the permitted area of the pit lane. The stewards could not make a decision before the start of the race on whether or not to penalize Hamilton.
Hamilton had a good start off the line, as did Valtteri Bottas, who jumped into P2. Bottas tried to take the lead from his teammate around the outside of the second corner, but ran wide over the kerbs on the exit. Max Verstappen ran straight into the runoff area on the outside of turn two, rejoining without losing a position.
Carlos Sainz also ran wide in the second corner. He crashed heavily into the wall trying to rejoin the ran between the two bollards. Further down the road, in turn four, Lance Stroll was spun by Charles Leclerc and hit the wall.
The safety car was deployed to allow the marshals to remove both stricken cars from the circuit.
It was an orderly restart when the safety car returned to the pit lane at lap 6. Hamilton maintained his lead by a comfortable margin.
A few laps after the restart, the stewards confirmed that Hamilton pre-race actions were worthy of a penalty. They awarded him two separate five-second time penalties for two violations, giving him a total of 10 seconds to serve in the pit lane or after the race.
The Mercedes team wanted to server both penalties in one pit stop. They called him Hamilton on lap 14, but Hamilton wanted to stay out. He set the fastest lap a few times and then came into the pits at the end of lap 16 with a 2.6 second lead. He rejoined the race in P11.
But the time the pit stops cycled through, Hamilton was up to P3. He was about 8 seconds behind Verstappen in P2 and 21 seconds to his teammate in the lead of the race.
Daniel Ricciardo was given a five-second time penalty for going over the kerbs on the outside of turn two but not rejoining the track between the set bollards. The penalty was earned during an organized swap between the Renault drivers. Esteban Ocon slowed to a crawl on the inside of turn 2 to allow Ricciardo by, but Ricciardo locked up into the corner.
In the closing stages of the race, the virtual safety car was deployed so that the markers on the turn 2 runoff area could be replaced.
Late in the race, the fans were treated to a good battle between Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. It ultimately ended with a lock up for Norris and a late pit stop for the sole remaining McLaren, which dropped him near the back of the field.
But at the front, it was Valtteri Bottas who took victory for the second time this season, closing the gap to his teammate in the World Drivers’ Championship, as Hamilton takes the bottom step of the podium. Max Verstappen was on the second step of the podium. Bottas took an extra point for the fastest lap of the race.
The teams will get another week off as they pack up and head to Germany in two week’s time. The race will be on the weekend of October 11 at the Nürburgring, for the first time since 2013.
Above results table does not include any post-race penalties
