Zimpapers Logo

SOCHI (Russia). – Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas secured his maiden Formula 1 victory by holding off a late charge from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the Russian Grand Prix.

Bottas jumped Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen at the start from his third position on the grid and dominated until the closing stages, when Vettel used a late pit stop to close up and pressure the Finn.

The four-time champion got to within a second and a half of Bottas with 10 laps to go but the Finn responded and kept Vettel at arm’s length for the rest of the race.

Bottas’ team-mate Lewis Hamilton capped a difficult weekend with a race to forget and finished only fourth behind Raikkonen.

New ice age: “I want less talking,” Finn Bottas coolly said over team radio with eight laps to go

Hamilton slipped to 13 points behind Vettel in the championship, with Bottas now only 10 adrift of the British three-time champion.

But Hamilton had reason to be grateful for Bottas’ accomplished performance without it, Vettel’s lead would be 20 points and edging towards a clear win.

The race confirmed Ferrari’s position as a match for Mercedes and the see-saw nature of the close competition between the two teams in what promises to be a very tightly contested title fight.

Game over: Jolyon Palmer capped a miserable weekend, crashing with Romain Grosjean on the first lap

Ferrari took their first front-row lock-out for nine years on Saturday as Mercedes struggled to get the best out of the ultra-soft tyres on a single qualifying lap.

Much depended on the start in a race that was going to feature just a single pit stop for the frontrunners, and Bottas made a flier.

The Finn made a peach of a getaway, quickly drawing alongside Vettel on the outside on the long run down to the first chicane and out-braking the Ferrari around the outside.

From there, Bottas edged into the distance, building a five-second lead by lap 19.

Twenty years ago Finland’s most successful F1 driver Mika Hakkinen won his first race for McLaren in Spain. He went on to win 20 races, as has countryman Kimi Raikkonen.

Vettel brought the gap down to three seconds as Bottas negotiated traffic in the next eight laps before the Mercedes driver made his pit stop on lap 27, and Ferrari decided to use a different strategy to put Vettel back in the fight.

The German waited another seven laps before his stop on lap 34, the idea being to have fresher tyres on which he could push harder and hopefully pressure Bottas over the remaining 18 laps.

Vettel rejoined just under five seconds behind the Mercedes and immediately began to eat into the gap.

A mistake by Bottas on lap 38, running wide at Turn 13 and flat-spotting his right-front tyre, reduced the gap to 2.8secs.

With two laps to go, Vettel was less than a second behind and had the use of the DRS overtaking aid, but Bottas, negotiating traffic, also had use of the DRS on the main straight at the start of the last lap and had just enough pace to hold him off. – BBC Sport