Sochi. One hundred victories in 14 years: Lewis Hamilton hits the target at the Russian GP and confirms himself as one of the greatest drivers of all time.
Rain decided a historic race for Hamilton, who snatched the first possible Formula 1 victory from 22-year-old Briton Lando Norris, who started from pole position, achieving his hundredth victory in a Formula 36 Grand Prix at the age of 1.
The race will therefore go down in history, also for the second place achieved by Max Verstappen, who started last due to an engine change and a penalty and who remains glued to the multiple Mercedes champion in the race for the world title.
Satisfaction at Ferrari, for the excellent third place of Carlos Sainz, who started second and was able to stay in the lead for the first half of the race, before giving it up to the aggressive Norris, yesterday's poleman.
“Phew, that was hard work, man!” Hamilton told team radio after the checkered flag, looking back on a 14-year run that began in 2007 with a win in Canada. Back then he was driving a McLaren, as Norris does now, a talent who has done everything he can to delay his maestro’s historic achievement and enter the World Championship’s hall of fame.
“It took me a long time to get to 100 wins and I wasn’t sure I would ever get there. I’m happy for myself and for the team,” Hamilton said, fourth on the grid after two mistakes in qualifying. “Today wasn’t easy. I lost a lot of ground at the start trying to avoid problems. It wouldn’t have been easy to overtake Lando who had great pace. The rain came at the right time and the team ultimately made the right choice.”
Behind him, Verstappen achieved a great result, also partly favored by the final brawl in the wet but still able to recover 18 positions and above all to stay close to Hamilton in the standings. Charles Leclerc was about to imitate him, starting alongside him and able to go up the current to the podium zone, but a delay in the final pit left him with an unmanageable Ferrari in the puddles, relegating him to 15th place. "The new power unit was certainly a positive thing for the team but today I can't be happy and now I'm really sorry for myself. After a race like that, finishing where I ended up isn't nice," lamented the Monegasque.
“Today I had a great start, I got behind Norris and I overtook him at the second corner. In the end, we managed to make the pit stop at the right time and I came out in third, taking the podium,” Sainz said.
Norris remains the big loser today, after a race conducted with skill, an excess of confidence and a wrong bet on the intensity of the rain that arrived five laps from the end, he was forced to stay on the track too long while the others, Hamilton in the lead, protected themselves immediately by fitting intermediate tyres.
His McLaren thus finished in seventh place, while his teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who had a much more anonymous race, took fourth place.
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