A Fiery Saturday at Sochi Autodrom

Formula 2 Feature race

The long run to Turn 2 at Sochi Autodrom often provides first lap carnages with many missing the braking points with the cold tires. A first lap crash today eliminated Christian Lundgaard who is 3^rd in the championship currently. Jehan Daruvala, who started from P2, lost one position right at the start to Mick Schumacher and one more during the pitstops, pitting 2 laps earlier than his fellow competitors. He ended up P5 and will be starting from P4 for tomorrow’s sprint race.

The Ferrari backed Mick Schumacher – son of 7^th time Formula 1 World Champion, Michael Schumacher extended his lead in the Formula2 2020 world championship by winning the feature race. He was followed by Honda backed driver, Yuki Tsunoda, who made an incredible move on the other Ferrari backed driver Callum Ilott to take 2^nd position. The podium was completed by Callum Illot but not before we had a photo finish with Luca Ghiotto crossing the line just 0.025 seconds behind Illot. Jehan Daruvala who started in P2 finished P5 adding 10 more points to his tally. The top 10 was rounded out by Jack Aitken – who put his mighty defensive driving on display, fellow Russian Nikita Mazepin, Guanyu Zhou, Marcus Armstrong and Dan Ticktum.

With the sprint race being a reverse grid race for the top 8. Zhou starts on pole position followed by Mazepin and Aitken. Jehan Daruvala would be starting from P4 and holds a chance to show another strong outing.

F1 Qualifying

The start of 1^st part of qualifying was greeted by a huge set of dark clouds hovering over the Sochi Autodrom. Valterri Bottas set the pace early on and was followed by his teammate Lewis Hamilton – 0.3seconds down. A bunch of drivers had their lap time deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 2. The 1^st part of qualifying ended with 5 slowest cars being eliminated which were both the Alfa Romeo’s of Antonio Giovinazzi (P17) & Kimi Raikkonen (P20) – who made a mistake in his final run, both Hass F1 drivers – Romain Grosjean (P16) and Kevin Magnussen (P18) and the Williams of Nicolas Latifi (P19). George Russell continued his superb run on Saturday’s qualifying with a mega lap to get into Q2 by going almost a second quicker than his teammate Nicolas Latifi. The top 15 drivers moved to the 2^nd part of qualifying.

The start of 2^nd part of qualifying started with both the Mercedes cars and the Redbull of Max Verstappen going out on mediums as opposed to softs by the rest. Lewis Hamilton had his lap time deleted for track-limits and Daniel Ricciardo of Renault put in a mega lap on softs to go P1. The session was interrupted by a huge crash for the 4-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel, who lost the rear end of his car during a timed lap. The session was red flagged with 2:15 minutes left and with fast cars like Alex Albon, Lance Stroll and Lewis Hamilton still languishing in the bottom 5 – elimination zone. Hamilton made a dash to the line after the session resumed with Albon and Hamilton improving their times and the 5 cars to be eliminated where the two Scuderia Ferraris of Charles Leclerc (P11) and Sebastian Vettel (P15), the Alpha Tauri of Danill Kvyat (P12), Racing point of Lance Stroll (P13) and the Williams of George Russell (P14).

The final part of qualifying which is a shootout for pole position and determining the order of top 10 on the grid for the race tomorrow started with all cars out immediately for their first runs. Lewis Hamilton maintained a comfortable lead over his teammate Bottas throughout the session. Lewis Hamilton bettered his fast lap his final run to claim pole position and the Mercedes cars were separated by the Red bull of Max Verstappen who pipped Valterri Bottas for P2 by 0.1s. Sergio Perez continued his good run with posting the 4^th quickest time. The two Renaults of Daniel Ricciardo and Estaben Ocon were separated by the McLaren of Carlon Sainz Jr. Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon rounded off the top 10.