Sochi saw a thrilling race from start to finish, especially between the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel and the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas.

The talking point of the last three laps of the race was whether Vettel could get below the one second gap to deploy his DRS system, despite managing to do so traffic meant the overtake alluded him, giving Bottas his first ever race win in Formula 1.

Kimi Raikkonen started second and finished third after losing out to Bottas’ amazing start giving him his first podium of 2017 and his first since Austria 2016.

With Lewis Hamilton finishing P4 Vettel has managed to gain a 13 point lead in the driver’s championship.

Hamilton suffered problems throughout the race with some very disgruntled radio messages coming from the Brit. Toto Wolff has said that Hamilton’s performance was purely down to problems with the car.

Elsewhere, Fernando Alonso was a non starter, abandoning his car during the formation lap, causing a second formation lap for the rest of the drivers.

Kevin Magnussen was given a five second penalty for his reentry to the track, the penalty caused him to fall outside of the top 10, finishing P13.

The one crash of the race was between Jolyon Palmer and Romain Grosjean, the collision meant they both exited the race early.

Joining Alonso, Palmer and Grosjean as a non finisher was Daniel Ricciardo who suffered brake problems which were strikingly similar to Verstappen’s in Bahrain.

FINAL RESULTS

P1 Bottas
P2 Vettel
P3 Raikkonen
P4 Hamilton
P5 Verstappen
P6 Perez
P7 Ocon
P8 Hulkenberg
P9 Massa
P10 Sainz
P11 Stroll
P12 Kvyat
P13 Magnussen
P14 Vandoorne
P15 Ericsson
P16 Wehrlein