This weekend Sochi has hosted the Russian Grand Prix. Bottas proves why he deserves to be a Mercedes team driver. After beating his teammate Lewis Hamilton for the whole weekend. Niki Lauda gave a margin of four races to show his talent with Mercedes. And it was in the fourth round of the World Championship when we saw the true potential of the driver. The Finn has saved the weekend for the Mercedes team, as they were behind Ferrari in all free practice and qualifying. On Saturday, the pole was for Sebastian Vettel and his Ferrari, followed by Kimi Räikkönen and Valtteri Bottas. But we did not have to wait a long time to see Bottas in the first position.
Bottas made a great start. He passed the Ferrari and put himself in first position. Although the Ferrari have had a great performance this weekend they could not reach Bottas. As he had a good race pace. Bottas seemed to feel good about the car. Unusualy Hamilton has remained in fourth position throughout the race, behind his teammate and the two Ferrari. Vettel had the opportunity to reach the victory but a failure at the pit stop avoided that. That way Bottas reached his first victory in Formula 1.
The Red Bull can’t join the fight for the championship. They began the Grand Prix with the abandonment of Ricciardo by a problem with his brakes. While Verstappen only managed to be fifth.
Mclaren Honda does not get their car working at all. When we saw Alonso’s, car stopped on the track, we were not surprised. Their failure caused the other pilots to take an extra installation lap. Usually the engine does not manage to finish the races but this time they not even have been able to start it. This has caused the anger of the Spanish at the team radio. All this happend at the same weekend when the Sauber team announced, that they will run with Honda engines from 2018 onwards. An engine that neither has power nor reliability. Mclaren will remain the preferred team for Honda, while Sauber will play the role of a customer team. Sauber will use the same gasoline and lubricants as Mclaren (currently Castrol and BP), to unify the development. Hasegawa will continue to lead the operations with Mclaren and Honda will appoint another staff for Sauber.