Valtteri Bottas takes the win at the Russian GP, which must be his favourite track, with Max Verstappen in 2nd and Lewis Hamilton in 3rd after serving a 10 second penalty.

The drama for today's race started prior to the race even beginning, as Lewis Hamilton was put under investigation by the FIA for practice starts outside of the proper area. Eventually this lead to him getting two 5 second penalties, which he had to serve during his pit stop whenever that would be. Hamilton will no doubt be upset with his team as he checked with them if he could do the practice starts at the end of the pitlane, which they okayed.

After the problems last race with the pit entry, the team is doing him no favours at the moment.

The start of the race itself was not free of drama either. Verstappen started in 2nd on the grid, but was overtaken by Bottas at the start of the race. A few turns later, Carlos Sainz in the McLaren went wide, and hit the wall when attempting to rejoin the track. Turn 2 had been difficult for lots of drivers over this weekend, as in practice many drivers had gone wide here. The Race Director clarified that if you do come off at this corner, you have to go around the bollards to rejoin the track. This was quite tight, and ultimately this is what caused Sainz to crash out.

Not long after, still on lap 1, Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari clipped the back of Lance Stroll's Racing Point, which was sent into the wall, taking him out of the race.

Both racers retired last race too, after both being on the podium the race before.

During the safety car on lap 3, three cars pitted to move onto hard tyres which would ideally last them the rest of the race; Williams' George Russell, Red Bull's Alex Albon, and McLaren's Lando Norris.

Hamilton was in first place still after the end of the safety car on lap 6, but he knew the penalty was coming. He started pushing harder to build up a gap between him and the rest of the pack, setting fastest laps almost every lap. He came into the pit on lap 17, served his penalty, moved to the hard tyres, and came back out in 11th place. Importantly this was still ahead of the only other car who had pitted (outside of the 3 at the back who pitted under the safety car), Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault.

Hamilton was frustrated at this point as he believed they should have pitted later, worried that he would now need to manage his tyres for the remaining 36 laps.

Now that Bottas was at the front, he began to eat the track up. He was now the one setting fastest laps every lap, bringing the time down from 1:39, to 1:38 and eventually into the 1:37 range.

Verstappen and Bottas pitted on lap 25 and 26 and came back out maintaining 2nd and 1st, which is where they stayed the rest of the race. Max was voted as driver of the day.

Personally I would have given Driver of the Day Charles Leclerc who raced his underpowered Ferrari into 6th place. Daniil Kvyat was also a contender for me, he started 11th and finished in 8th, but had a great race fueled by a brilliant strategy from his team, starting him on the hard tyres and keeping him out much longer than everyone else, allowing him to stay up the front for a long time and avoiding midfield battles.

Around lap 26 Renault's Esteban Ocon was struggling to go past Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari who was yet to pit and on much older tyres. Vettel was sat in 5th with both Renaults' behind him. After a couple of laps with no luck getting past, the team orders came in for Ocon to let Ricciardo go by and fight Vettel instead. Unfortunately for him the call came late, and Ricciardo ended up locking up going past Ocon, and went off at Turn 2, rejoining before the bollards. He was able to catch and overtake Vettel fairly easily, but was given a 5 second penalty for rejoining the track at the wrong point.

Ricciardo however was not worried about that:

Really after this point the most interesting battles were happening for the last points positions. On lap 46, Norris, Albon and Pierre Gasly in the AlphaTauri were fighting for 9th and 10th. Norris was at the front, but he was still on his hard tyres from lap 3. Albon and Gasly on the other hand had both pitted for newer tyres since, and were right behind him. Norris defended his position expertly for a few laps, and even caused Albon to drop behind Gasly as he denied him an overtake. Eventually however Gasly was able to pass him, and Albon wasn't far behind, helped by Norris locking up. Having missed out on the points, Norris pitted for fresh tyres to help him get to the end of the race.

Sergio Perez in the Racing Point had a quietly decent race too, starting and finishing in 4th place.

Here are the results from this week:

And here are the driver standings now, Hamilton 44 points ahead as Bottas reduces the gap by 11 points. The fight for 4th place should be very interesting too, as less than 10 points separate 4th and 9th place.

The two penalties for Hamilton leave him with 10 points on his Super Licence, 2 more before the end of the year and he will receive a race ban, which will give the other drivers a chance to close the gap even more. "They're trying to stop me" Hamilton said of the FIA stewards and their decisions over the past couple of races, clearly he is unhappy with the strange occurrences happening recently. He will have to wait at least another 2 weeks now to match the race victories record.

On the other side of the Mercedes pit, Bottas was extremely happy to silence the haters who had been hounding him all week. After finishing the race, he said over the radio "I just wanna thank my critics, and to whom it may concern, Fuck You".

In two weeks we go to Germany for a race at the famous Nürburgring.

BONUS CONTENT:

In celebration of the remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2, the F1 Twitter account shared a fantastic tweet of a moment from FP3:

And George Russell gave a very convincing presentation on why he should be Rookie of the Year:

Finally a clip from last race that I forgot to include, but I have been quoting ever since. Kimi Räikkönen's response to being told he had a 5 second penalty in the Tuscan GP.