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Mercedes’ title as Hamilton wins
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LEWIS Hamilton won the inaugural Russian Formula One Grand Prix and extended his championship lead to 17 points yesterday in a Mercedes one-two that clinched the team’s first constructors’ title.
The Briton, who started on pole, chalked up his fourth win in a row and ninth of the season after German teammate Nico Rosberg locked up at the first corner and damaged his tires in a costly error.
With 100 points still to be won from the final three races, thanks to double points in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton has 291 points to Rosberg’s 274 with everything still to play for.
Hamilton, the 2008 world champion, also became only the fourth driver in F1 history to win nine races in a single season and equalled Nigel Mansell’s British record of 31 career victories.
On a warm and sunny afternoon in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Rosberg kept himself firmly in contention with a fine recovery drive from 20th place after his second lap pitstop.
“Nico did a great job to return from his mistake,” said Hamilton. “To get the first championship for Mercedes Benz is amazing, a beautiful day.”
Finland’s Valtteri Bottas finished third for Williams, and set the fastest lap, in a race watched by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a circuit snaking around some of the landmark venues from this year’s Winter Olympics.
Putin also presented the trophies, in what Hamilton described as a ‘kind of surreal’ moment, with the drivers making sure he had left the podium before spraying the champagne that had lain virtually untouched last weekend following Jules Bianchi’s horrific accident in Japan.
The one-two was the ninth of the season for Mercedes, one shy of McLaren’s 1988 record, and formally ended Red Bull’s run of four titles in a row.
Mercedes returned to Formula One with a works team only in 2010, after pulling out in 1955, while the constructors’ championship did not exist before 1958.
Before the start, the 21 drivers had stood silently in a circle on the starting grid in a tribute to Marussia driver Bianchi, who remains critically injured, while the Russian national anthem sounded.
McLaren’s Jenson Button finished fourth with Danish teammate Kevin Magnussen fifth. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was sixth, while Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel were seventh and eighth.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was ninth, with Force India’s Sergio Perez 10th.
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