Bottas WINS Russian Grand Prix as Hamilton penalised

Bottas wins the Russian Grand Prix as a penalty for Hamilton for illegal practice starts saw him penalised and finishing third.

After the mess Hamilton made in Q2 qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix, he started the race on soft tyres – a disadvantage – so the race was likely to be interesting.

In fact, apart from another cock-up from Mercedes gaining Hamilton a 10-second penalty, it was quite a boring race.

As Hamilton left the pits before the race he asked if he could do practice starts outside the designated area and was told, by his team, he could. But the stewards disagreed and he garnered a 10-second penalty.

The race started with Hamilton in front, although challenged by Bottas, with the Mercedes cars comfortably fending off the pack behind, but once Hamilton had served his penalty he was in third place after the pit stop round but, on poorer tyres, unable to make any impact.

The race finished with a comfortable win for Bottas, with Verstappen in second in the Red Bull and Hamilton in third.

Behind the top three it was Perez in fourth for Racing Point, Ricciardo fifth for Renault, Leclerc managing a bit of dignity for Ferrari in sixth, Ocon in the Renault in seventh, Kvyat and Gasly in the AlphaTauris in eighth and ninth and Albon in the Red Bull in the final points place.

But it was a miserable day for McLaren, with Sainz not making it past lap one after hes smashed in to the wall at turn tow, and Norris limping through with problems to finish 15th.

Off for the Eifel Grand Prix in two weeks time at the Nurburgring.