Russian grand prix: A story of heartbreak and history

This article was originally posted for and by The Falmouth Anchor. Due to technical issues with their website, I have reuploaded my work.

It is the DNA of Formula 1 to guarantee high stakes, high-risk, high-octane racing. If I were to pick a race from the fifteen raced so far this season that exemplify this fact, I’d sit you down to watch the Russian grand prix. With an outstanding qualifying that provided Lando Norris with his maiden pole position, met with his former teammate Carlos Sainz jr. on the front row, with friend and fellow Brit George Russell tucked in at P3, Sunday’s race was destined for thrills and spills.

It’s lights out and away they go, as they say. Norris got an excellent start, Sainz a relatively poor one and was soon swamped by Russell. The calendar’s longest straight, however, diminished Norris’ excellent start. The immense toe (the act of a car pushing through the air, creating a clearer, faster path for the car/s behind) he provided gave Sainz the ability to pass the McLaren after turn two. Despite the high-speed tousling for positions, surprisingly, twenty cars found their way out of lap one, unharmed. Lewis Hamilton, hunting down his 100th win a spell of unsuccessful races started from fourth, but found himself in an unrelenting DRS train behind the other McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo. His threat became minimised as he remained caught in the DRS train. The next few laps continued in a consistent pace. Verstappen charged through the field making amends for his engine penalty, with Leclerc proceeding to do so too.

Some early pitters mixed the strategy up, suggesting some cars were opting for a two-stop race whilst others stayed on the one stop strategy. Norris was still the de facto leader of the grand prix (the three cars ahead yet to stop) with every lap coming closer to his first ever F1 win. Then, across the radio came the call that sends F1 spectators into a frenzy: “Rain expected in the next ten minutes.”

Suddenly one-stop, two-stop strategies are unimportant. It’s raining on some corners, it’s dry on others – do you stick with slicks, the faster tyre by far, in the dry, or opt with the intermediate which can handle the wet and stabilise the car? Can you make the last few laps? What are your competitors around you doing? Do you want them to react to you or you to react to them? Lando Norris, with a hungry Lewis Hamilton less than a second behind him, opted to stick to his hard tyres, and in that one decision, saw his first F1 win tumble away and land him in 7th place.

That is what I find so absorbing about Formula One: the capacity for fortunes to change in an instant. Hamilton, who was running out of laps to try and win finally achieved his historic 100th win, Max Verstappen who started 20th finished 2nd, Carlos Sainz who had dropped back after poor strategy from Ferrari and was told halfway through the race that 5th was his highest expected finishing position, ended up on the podium.

As Lando Norris explained himself, ‘it’s just a bit of heartbreak, you know.’ 

Looking ahead to the remaining seven races of the season in terms of the driver’s championship, Lewis is two points ahead of Max (a gap that would have been much larger considering Max’s starting position) with Hamilton no doubt requiring a fourth engine and/or power unit change, incurring a penalty. Ten minutes of rain at the Sochi Autodrom has further guaranteed an incredibly tight and tense concluding arc of the 2021 season with, undoubtedly, more stories of heartbreak and history to come.