Glorious sunshine and clear blue skies dominated the pitlane of the 2018 Russian Grand Prix as the runup to qualifying commenced. But if FP3 was any clue, the most exciting thing about the weekend will have been the reintroduction of the Russian Rocket, Daniil Kvyat, stepping back into Toro Rosso after spectacularly self-destructing in the very same team following his demotion from Red Bull in favor of Max Verstappen. Depending upon who you listened to it was due to either Kvyat bringing knowledge from Ferrari, budget from new Russian sponsors, and/or a total lack of superlicense qualified drivers in the Red Bull junior program. Or, if that wasn’t exciting enough, you could also go with Ferrari’s MASSIVE technical update, some of which was reverted overnight as they found their new rear suspension not working at all as planned, which resulted in a late night for, you guessed it, Daniil Kvyat in the Ferrari simulator setting up the car, hours before he was confirmed in his new seat at Toro Rosso.
Regarding Ferrari, it’s not a surprise to see them struggle a bit, given the size of the development they brought, in particular, with a new front wing, it can take time to translate results from CFD to the real world. One need only think of Mercedes learning curve from Spa to Singapore to get an idea of how even a successful development can take a race or two for the team to fully optimise. Still, it’s time they don’t have with a dwindling number of races and no doubt Liberty will be wishing for some serious in race drama to help keep the eyeballs sticky. And no doubt it won’t be doing Vettel any favours, as his relationship to the team’s decision-making already seems to be rather fraught and is easily summed up by the vision of him sent out at the tail end of FP3 only to catch the red light ending the session at the end of the pitlane and needing to be rolled back to the garage, a process he initiated on his own until the marshals came to assist him. Naturally, the team then told him to wait, as the rest of the field was rolling back in….
A ray of sunshine for Honda, whose upgraded PU performed well in the hands of Gasly, although the decision was made to revert and make some changes to optimise the PU to the chassis a bit more. As a result, both Toro Rossos will be dinged for a grid penalty, along with both Red Bulls and Alonso, because, of course, McLaren, whose radical low downforce package saw them at the bottom of the timesheets. The hole left at the front of the grid by the absence of Red Bull will be of great interest to HAAS, Renault and Force India as they fight it out for the top of the Formula B championship. Or is it Formula 1.5? Opinions differ…. At any rate, with Leclerc stuck in at P7 playing spoiler, it was Ocon, Magnussen, Perez and Sainz in that order, covered by less than 0.2 seconds, with Renault looking to be having a bit of a struggle. Regardless, the expectation is that both Red Bulls will be able to catch them and overtake, but the back of the midfield can be a treacherous place and stealing some extra points will be the top of the agenda for those competing for the best of the rest.
Stroll was on it and from the early runners it was KMag who took the honours for S1. As they hammered into the middle sector, Raikkonen and Vettel were well into it, taking the purple away from KMag, who wound up best of the rest from the early runners. Stroll was wide at T8 leaving him 4 seconds off and no doubt cooling his tyres for another bite at that particular apple.
Vettel to a 1:33.534 and to the top, with Kimi about 0.27s behind. KMag’s time was just 0.2 seconds back of Raikkonen, and he was trailed by Gasly and Leclerc, until Perez flashed across the line to go P5 only to be outdone by Ocon in P4. It was roughly 0.2 seconds again separating the HAAS from the Force India. 10 minutes to go and the Mercedes were finally on track and it was Bottas with a faultless run, a 1:33.17 to take P1 whilst Hamilton had an issue in S3 and languished in P10 as Ferrari decided to give it another go.
On the outside looking in were Hartley, Alonso, Sirotkin, Vandoorne and Stroll, off for some borscht as the rest turned it around, Sirotkin’s spin having ruined the excitement at the end of Q1 by compromising several good laps. Not affected and with an eye opening run was Leclerc, up to P7 and best of the rest.
Ocon led the way into Q3, followed by Bottas and Hamilton. Raikkonen, Perez and Kmag were next, followed by RoGro. A bit of a gap then Vettel and Leclerc were the lanterne rouge of the outlap. Lewis’ outlap was significantly slower than Bottas, and it was a bit of a twitch for Bottas as he exited the final turn at full speed to set off on his first hotlap.
To the surprise of no one, Hamilton continued his dominance and best of the rest was Leclerc up by a tenth through S1. Troubles for Hamilton in S2 where he lost 3 tenths to his teammate. He came back in S3 but it wasn’t quite enough and as the dust settled it was Bottas on provisional pole by a terrifyingly small .004 seconds, and Ocon was P5 leading Leclerc by a similarly tiny margin, 0.006 seconds. Well, at least there was something to watch for in the final runs… Vettel slotted 3rd, but 0.6 seconds down, which increasingly looked to be the best Ferrari were going to achieve on the weekend.
At the sharp end, the first 3 turns and pit strategy will be the story, as frankly Ferrari lack the pace since their latest developments haven’t all worked as planned, putting them on the backfoot for the weekend. It’s supposed to be hotter tomorrow which, prior to Singapore would have looked to favour Ferrari, but barring that it will be the Red Bulls carving through the field most likely to offer up some interesting shots for the telly. The real grind will be the midfield, which looks to be highly competitive with the twist of the Renaults having the tyre advantage over HAAS and Force India who will be starting on the difficult to manage Hypersoft tyre. And who knows, we can always argue about whether Merc should implement team orders to advantage Hamilton in his fight for the WDC if all else goes sideways….
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