The Russian Grand Prix is an annual Formula 1 race held at Sochi Autodrom. A street circuit built around Olympic Park in Sochi. The plans were made to host a Formula 1 event in Moscow for the 1983 season as the Grand Prix of the Soviet Union, these plans fell through. In 2010, it was officially announced that the Russian city of Sochi, which was also preparing to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, will host a new event on the F1 schedule beginning in the 2014 Formula 1 season under a seven-year deal.

Russian Prix, Round four of the 2017 Formula 1 season

Circuit Name: Sochi Autodrom – Street Circuit

Race Laps: 53

Circuit Length: 5.848 km (3.634 mi)

Race Length: 309.732 km (192.459 mi)

Number of corners: 18 (12 Right, 6 Left)

DRS Zone: Two Zones (Zone 1 Between Turn 1 and 2, zone 2 Between turn 10 and 13)

Circuit Direction: Anti Clockwise

Pole Position 2016: Nico Rosberg - Mercedes 1:35.417

Race Lap Record: 1:39.094 Nico Rosberg – Mercedes 2016

 

Pirelli used compounds

For the first 5 round of the 2017 Formula 1 season, Pirelli will supply all teams with the same sets of compounds, following the introduction on the new wider and bigger tires.

Compounds sets will be as follows:

7 of the softest (P Zero Purple ultra-soft here)

5 of the middle (P Zero Red supersoft here)

2 of the Hardest (P Zero Yellow Soft here)

 

Tyres that must be available (one of them to be used) at some point in the race:

One set of P Zero Yellow soft
One set of P Zero Red supersoft

There are the tyres assigned for Q3 in qualifying:                     
One set of P Zero Purple ultrasoft

 

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING

“The race follows a two-day test in Bahrain, so it will be interesting to see how the lessons learned there translate into on-track performance and tyre management in Russia. On the face of it, with Sochi being a low-severity circuit and more durable tyres this year, it should be a relatively straightforward one-stop race. However, this is the first time we are going there with the ultrasoft tyre, so the effect that it has together with the new generation of cars remains to be seen. The performance gap between the softest compounds is relatively small, so all three choices are potential race tyres in Sochi.”

 

 

Numbers and Facts

Most wins (driver) 2 HAMILTON

Most wins (constructor) 3 MERCEDES

Wins from pole position 2 2014 – 2016

Lowest grid for past winner 2 2015

Most recent 1-2 finish 2016 HAMILTON-ROSBERG for MERCEDES

Most emphatic win (here) 25.022 2016

Closest winning margin 5.953 2015

Safety Car-affected races 2 2015 – 2016

Fastest race (here) 2014 53L @1:31’50.744

Slowest race (here) 2015 53L @1:37’11.024

Most pole positions (driver) 2 ROSBERG

Most pole positions (constructor) 3 MERCEDES

 

What Happened last race here?

Nico Rosberg won the race from pole position, ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton, with Kimi Raikkonen completing the podium for Ferrari.

Sebastian Vettel retired from the race on the first lap, after contact with Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat.

By securing pole position, winning the race, setting the fastest lap and leading every lap, Nico Rosberg achieved the first grand slam of his career.

2016 Race Classification

Pos.	Driver	Constructor	Time/Retired	Grid
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:32:41.997	1
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	+25.022	10
3	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	+31.998	3
4	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	+50.217	2
5	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	+1:14.527	4
6	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda	+1 Lap	14
7	Kevin Magnussen	Renault	+1 Lap	17
8	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	+1 Lap	15
9	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	+1 Lap	6
10	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda	+1 Lap	12
11	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer	+1 Lap	5
12	Carlos Sainz Jr.	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	+1 Lap	11
13	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	+1 Lap	18
14	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	+1 Lap	22
15	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer	+1 Lap	8
16	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	+1 Lap	19
17	Esteban Gutiérrez	Haas-Ferrari	+1 Lap	16
18	Pascal Wehrlein	MRT-Mercedes	+2 Laps	20
Ret	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	Power unit	9
Ret	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	Collision	7
Ret	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	Collision	13
Ret	Rio Haryanto	MRT-Mercedes	Collision	21

 

Did you know?

DRIVERS

✪ Sebastian Vettel has only taken pole once for Ferrari, in Singapore 2015

✪ Vettel has still not won back-to-back Grand Prix since he won the 2013 Brazilian Grand Prix. That race ended a 9-race run of victories that started in Belgium, (BEL, ITA,SIN, KOR, JAP, IND, ABU, USA, BRA)

✪ Lewis Hamilton is just 5 pole positions from equalling Michael Schumacher’s all-time record of 68 F1 GP pole positions. Since he has been at Mercedes he has taken

pole 37 times already. That is over 40% of all races he’s started for the team (37/ 80 = 46.3%). He is also just 2 behind Ayrton Senna’s (second-best) career total of 65 pp’s

✪ Hamilton in Bahrain scored his 107th F1 podium to beat Alain Prost’s 106 F1 podiums. Only Michael Schumacher has achieved more F1 podiums (155)

✪ Hamilton has won (54) 28.3% of all GP he’s started (191) and is in the top 10 drivers races to win ratio of all-time. This is how he compares:-

1. Fangio 47.0%, 2. Ascari 40.6%, 3. Clark 34.7%, 4. M. Schumacher 29.7%, 5. Hamilton 28.3%, 6. Ja. Stewart 27.2%, 7. Prost 25.6%, 8. A. Senna 25.5%,
2. Vettel 24.3% (44/ 181), 10. S. Moss 24.2% 10.

✪ Hamilton has now led 102 different F1 Grand Prix races. Only Michael Schumacher has led more (142)

✪ Before Valtteri Bottas Hamilton has had 4 different teammates in F1. Fernando Alonso, Heikki Kovalainen, Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg. Of the 4 Alonso is now the only one left racing in F1

✪ Bottas’s next points finish will mark the 50th Grand Prix in which he has finished in the top 10 and scored points. To date, he has started 80 Grand Prix

✪ Felipe Massa was 36 on April 25th

✪ Sergio Perez needs just 1 more podium to become the Mexican driver with the most F1 podiums (currently =1 with Pedro Rodriguez on 7)

✪ Romain Grosjean was 31 on April 17th

✪ Daniil Kvyat was 23 on 26th April

✪ Russia is likely to be the 75th Grand Prix contested by Fernando Alonso since he last won (Spain 2013) and the 50th Grand Prix since he led a race or scored a podium

result (Hungary 2014)

✪ Even though Alonso has yet to be around for the waving of the chequered flag, Lance Stroll is in fact now the only driver without a classified race finish so far this season.

Alonso’s McLaren was retired to the garage with 3 laps to go in Bahrain but was officially classified as a race finisher in 14th place

 

CONSRTUCTORSCONSTRUCTORS’

✪ Ferrari last season was the only team to score championship points at all 21 events

✪ Bahrain was Ferrari’s 150th Grand Prix start on Pirelli tyres. It is 30 more races on the Italian-made rubber than any other constructor

✪ Mercedes in Russia will be aiming to lockout the front row for the 49th time. The all-time record is 62 and is jointly held by McLaren and Williams

✪ Mercedes’s next fastest lap of the race will be the marque’s 50th as a F1 World Championship constructor

✪ Red Bull has achieved a podium result for at least one of their drivers podium in 100 different F1 Grand Prix

✪ The current Williams team traces its origins back to the setting up of Williams Grand Prix Engineering by Frank Williams and Patrick Head in 1977. This year the team will

be celebrating its 40th anniversary. The team began by running a March for Belgian Patrick Neve who sadly died earlier is year and later in 1978, became a constructor

running a single FW06 car for Alan Jones. In 1979 the team expanded to 2 cars with Clay Regazzoni joining Jones. Regazzoni won Williams’s first Grand Prix, at Silversone

in 1979 while Jones claimed Williams’s first driver’s and first constructor’s titles in 1980. Frank Williams had made his first forays into F1 in 1969, running a Brabham for

Piers Courage. Campaigns with De Tomaso, private March’s, with his own cars and ex-works Heskeths latterly in conjunction with Canadian-Austrian entrepreneur Walter

Wolf followed but it wasn’t until Williams teamed up with Head and started a new team all over again that Williams’s F1 fortunes really took off

✪ Williams has not led a Grand Prix since leading the British Grand Prix 18 months ago

✪ Have F1 cars suddenly become less reliable? In the first 3 races last year, 66 cars left the garage for the grid and 8 returned earlier than scheduled with mechanical failure.

So far in 2017, after 3 races 60 cars have left the garage for the grid and 14 have returned before the end of the race following mechanical failure. The mechanical failure

percentages are, 12.1% in 2016 compared with 23.3% in 2017, almost double. That said, only 1 car the McLaren-Honda of Stoffel Vandoorne has been prevented from

even starting a race (Bahrain). Last season in the first 3 events, 3 cars were prevented from making race starts due to mechanical failure

 

RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX

✪ Lewis Hamilton is the only former winner of the Russian Grand Prix racing here this weekend. Hamilton has won 2 of the 3 Russian Grand Prix to date. 2016 F1 World

Champion Nico Rosberg won the other (in 2016). Hamilton has led exactly 100 race laps in Russia to date, 53 laps in 2014 and 47 laps in 2015

✪ Mercedes is the only constructor to date to have taken a pole, won a race and led a race lap in Russia

✪ Valtteri Bottas has qualified for each of the 3 Russian Grand Prix to date in the top 3. Only Nico Rosberg betters Bottas’s record having started from the front row here in 2014, 2015 and 2016 including twice from pole.

 

Driver’s Championship standing

POS	DRIVER	Constructor	POINTS
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	68
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	61
3	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	38
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	34
5	Max Verstappen	Red Bull Racing-Tag Heuer	25
6	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Tag Heuer	22
7	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	16
8	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	14
9	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	10
10	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	4
11	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	4
12	Esteban Ocon	Force India-Mercedes	3
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	2
14	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	2
15	Pascal Wehrlein	Sauber-Ferrari	0
16	Antonio Giovinazzi	Sauber-Ferrari	0
17	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	0
18	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren-Honda	0
19	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda	0
20	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	0

 

Constructor’s Championship standing

POS	CONSTRUCTOR	POINTS
1	Ferrari	102
2	Mercedes	99
3	Red Bull/Renault	47
4	Force India/Mercedes	17
5	Williams/Mercedes	16
6	Toro Rosso/Renault	12
7	Haas/Ferrari	8
8	Renault	2
9	Sauber/Ferrari	0
10	McLaren/Honda	0

 

Driver’s penalty points:

Driver	Penalty points
Daniil Kvyat	8
Jolyon Palmer	7
Carlos Sainz	7
Sebastian Vettel	6
Nico Hulkenberg	4
Pascal Wehrlein	4
Kevin Magnussen	4
Esteban Ocon	4
Sergio Perez	3
Romain Grosjean	3
Valtteri Bottas	2
Kimi Raikkonen	2
Marcus Erricson	2
Felipe Massa	2
Lewis Hamilton	2
Max Verstappen	1