Sometimes if you don’t have bad luck you don’t have any luck at all. Lewis Hamilton, the defending Champion, probably feels like that today.
After 2 weeks of working on it he’s experiencing the same kind of overheating problems with his KERS that he did in Shanghai. As in that race he will start no higher than 10th and if they have to replace drivetrain parts it could be considerably farther back than that.
One of the things that make this such a handicap is not just the loss of power, which is considerable, but because the Energy Recovery provides a large measure of what you would call in a conventional car ‘engine braking’, the stress on the brakes increases and you have to drive the car more lightly in all respects to avoid catastrophic failure.
Last time out Hamilton struggled to a 7th at the finish (from dead last on the grid) and while that was good enough to leave him 3 points ahead of Ricciardo at 3rd for the Drivers Championship, it puts him no closer to Rosberg for 1st.
Rosberg on the other hand is having a dream season in the second Mercedes, on pole and with victories in every single race so far. He’ll start on pole today too.
Hamilton has been taking at least the spokesperson lead in the Drivers’ unhappiness with the rule changes for 2017. Among the things they’re upset about is more cockpit enclosure. The drivers contend it reduces visibility (which is indisputable, but not as bad as feared) and is ineffective against anything except freak accidents like the spring hit that happened to Massa. There they have a point because they would have done nothing to mitigate the fatal injuries to Jules Bianchi (too much energy in the impact) and the concussion suffered by Alonso earlier this season (you can keep the skull fairly straight, the brain kind of sloshes around inside it).
The other item of consequence, and this is actually quite important, is the new downforce package. The FIA is trying to achieve it through modifications to the aerodynamics and while they project lap times as much as 5 seconds faster the problem is that it spoils the air for the trailing car and makes it harder to pass. What you end up with is a faster train, which, given that the races will be even more stupifyingly boring than they are now, at least has the benefit of making the time you waste watching shorter.
Now you could get the same result from increasing mechanical grip by making modifications to the suspension and tires, but the FIA isn’t interested.
Another dispute, this one led by the engine manufacturers particularly Honda, is over changing the drive trains for expense at the cost of reduced displacement. Honda, which is finally seeing some success with McLaren understandably believes this would make the work they’ve done to make their engine reliable and fast so much garbage.
This week in Bernie outrage- well, first of all he said that women would never be competitive in Formula One which is not just sexist but provably wrong since a fair number of them have been hired as test and development drivers. Next he said Millenials were just a bunch of selfish pricks and he didn’t care if they became fans or not because it wasn’t their sport. Way to market Bernie, look what wonders that has done for the Republicans. Finally, because he’s convinced that people will think the cars are racier or faster if they sound louder he’s finally persuaded the FIA to institute a minimum decibel level.
Let’s face it, the sooner Formula One dumps him in a home for the cranky and senile the better off they’ll be.
Sochi is the 3rd longest track after Spa-Francorchamps and Silverstone. Today’s tires are Mediums, Softs, and SuperSofts. Race coverage starts at 7:00 am ET on CNBC with a repeat at 4:00 pm ET on NBC Sports.
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Lap 30 of 53
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Verstappen
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Ricciardo
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5 second penalty for Nasr
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Ricciardo switches to Softs
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Gutierrez goes a lap down as does Wehrlein. Lap 30
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Lap 34 Verstappen has stopped
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Engine
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Lap 35 of 53
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Perez
Sainz
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Lap 40 of 53
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Perez
Sainz
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Wehrlein pits
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Hamilton had a water pressure problem that seems to have stabilized
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Lap 45 of 53
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Perez
Sainz
Sainz is one lap down
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Massa pits again
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Lap 50 of 53
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Perez
Button
Magnussen is a lap down
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Lap 51 Alonso goes a lap down
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Final
Rosberg
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Bottas
Massa
Alonso
Magnussen
Grosjean
Perez
Button
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