The second year at this new Grand Prix venue provided an exciting race, with a Safety Car that changed the outcome. But it could have done more; it could have given Ferrari a double podium, if they had played it differently and they may even have lucked into a win.
Last year there were several surprises about the new 5.8 kilometre Sochi circuit; the track surface gave low tyre degradation and the long lap with 11 corners at around 110km/h meant fuel consumption was critical. This year Pirelli brought softer tyres, the Supersoft and soft, but teams knew even from the limited practice running they got, that it was likely to be a one stop race.
Ferrari misses an opportunity for a double podium and even a win..
On the face of it this was another dominant win for Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton after his team mate Nico Rosberg, who had started from pole position and led the early laps, retired with throttle problems. Ferrari finished second with Sebastian Vettel and Force India’s Sergio Perez picked up third, as Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen hit Williams’ Valtteri Bottas on the last lap as they battled for third.
In fact there was a clear opportunity for Ferrari not only to avoid that risky final overtake, but to guarantee Raikkonen a podium using Race Strategy early on. When the Safety Car was deployed on Lap 12, for the accident of Romain Grosjean, only four cars chose to pit. In race order these were Perez, Ricciardo, Sainz and Button.
At this stage Hamilton was leading Bottas, with Raikkonen five seconds behind in third, holding up his team mate Vettel. So why did Ferrari not split strategies at this point and pit one of its drivers, so it would be the leading car of those going to the finish on soft tyres?
F1 race strategists go into a Grand Prix with a number of scenarios in their plans. One of them is a schematic of what parts of the race would something like a Safety Car trigger a decision. In Sochi with soft tyres that could manage up to 40 laps, then a Safety Car around Lap 12-15 was a clear trigger for a decision. It was surprising that only four drivers took the opportunity.
Ferrari had two cars in the lead pack, whereas Mercedes and Williams had only one each. Raikkonen was holding up Vettel so it made sense to pit the Finn under the Safety Car, allowing Vettel to close up to Bottas. Meanwhile Raikkonen would have become the leading car on soft tyres going to the finish, ahead of Perez and Ricciardo, as it turned out. By stopping at Safety Car speeds on Lap 12 he would expect to lose positions to Perez, Kvyat, Nasr and Ricciardo. But as Perez and Ricciardo stopped anyway, in fact only Kvyat and Nasr would have been ahead.
Raikkonen would have been able to pass both relatively easily on new tyres and then he would have been back to fourth position with his teammate up the road in third, but still to make a stop. After the restart the leading cars went for another nine laps before stopping. Bottas would have slotted back in behind Raikkonen had Ferrari made that early stop and the older Finn would have been ahead to the finish, scoring a podium in third.
If, however there had been a Virtual Safety Car or Safety Car between laps 21 and 25 then Raikkonen would have won the race, as Mercedes, Ferrari and Williams would have had no choice but to pit and Raikkonen would have been ahead by around 10 seconds. With only one car each, Mercedes and Williams would not have been able to cover him. It sounds far fetched (and of course there was no additional VSC or Safety Car) but it happens in F1 and it’s one of the scenarios that strategy teams work out in advance.
Bottas meanwhile lost position to Vettel through a combination of factors; his starting tyres were three laps older, so he had to pit earlier and that dropped him out into traffic behind Perez. Williams also had another slow pit stop, which exacerbated the situation. They have a plan to improve their pit stops by up to a second next season with new pit equipment and technology; that can’t come soon enough.
Perez rides his luck
Instead of Bottas or Raikkonen it was Sergio Perez who scored his fifth F1 podium with another trademark performance, based on making a set of soft tyres last a long time while still maintaining strong pace. This has been the key to most of the podium finishes in his career, particularly the three he scored with Sauber in 2012. His was the first car to pit under the Lap 12 Safety Car and he managed the soft tyres very effectively from the restart on Lap 17 to the finish on Lap 53.
He was caught by Bottas and Raikkonen three laps from the end, but he let both through as he’d been informed by the team not to hold up the second car once the first had got through, as here was a chance they may collide in a last gasp battle. This is exactly what happened.
Raikkonen had been very racy all afternoon and when his engineer encouraged him to attack on the final lap he went for a speculative move from a long way back and took Bottas out, damaging his own car in the process. Perez gratefully retook third place and celebrated on the podium.
