2021 Russian GP: Post-Race reactions from Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton wins epic 2021 Russian Grand Prix to become first ever to win 100 Grand Prix in Formula One history. Mercedes continues their dominance in the seashore of Black sea with a 100% win record at Sochi.

The Mercedes driver making a late switch to intermediate tyres to take the lead when pole-sitter Lando Norris agonisingly slid out of the lead with just two laps left.

Although Hamilton dropped to seventh at the start, his pace was competitive on his medium tyres once he was freed by Daniel Ricciardo before pitted on Lap 27 for hards ahead of Norris. Once the pitstop sequences had finished by Lap 38 it was Norris leading a rapid Hamilton. The pair were just one second part in the closing stages. And then the rain hit.

Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton took a gamble to pit for inters like many other drivers while Lando Norris opted to stay on the track with white marked hard slick tyres. The McLaren driver did his best to keep the lead but, with the rain getting heavier by the second, he eventually slid off the track and Hamilton passed him for P1.

Valtteri Bottas finished the race in P5 after starting the race 16th on the grid. Mercedes took a late decision to fit a new power unit into his car, which dropped Bottas from his qualifying position of P7 to P16. With that Valtteri Bottas was off the podium in Russia for the first time since joining Mercedes – and tomorrow marks 1 year since he last won a race.

Lewis Hamilton takes lead back in the 2021 Drivers championship battle. His lead stands at just two points over Verstappen after 15 races – while Mercedes extends their lead over Red Bull in the team’s constructor championship battle to 33 points.

Hamilton is the first driver to win from outside the top 3 on the grid in Sochi. It was his first win from 4th on the grid since Hungary 2009. Surprisingly Lewis leads the drivers championship despite picking up win for only the 2nd time in the last 11 races – his previous victory was the British GP.

Lewis Hamilton (P1)

“Wow… 100! It’s taken a long time and I wasn’t even sure the 100th would come! Going to bed last night I wasn’t the happiest with the job I did yesterday. I watched the replay over and over again; they were subtle mistakes but I was so determined to put things right when I woke up this morning.

Today was tough – I lost a lot of ground at the start, just trying to stay out of trouble. I was patient and at the end, when the rain came, I didn’t want to let Lando go by boxing. Of course I didn’t know what the rain was doing, it was just my feeling but I’m incredibly grateful to the strategy team for the job they did today. Getting anywhere near 100 victories wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of the men and women here and back at the factory, I’m so grateful to them – it just feels so special.

Lando did an amazing job today, he had incredible pace and he’s doing such a great job for McLaren. It was bittersweet to see my old team ahead, they’re doing so well powered by Mercedes and it’s good to see them united again. Max did a good job to come up from second to last, the battle continues and we know we need to be on top form over the remaining races.”

Valtteri Bottas (P5)

“Firstly, congrats to Lewis on the win and his 100th victory. From my side, it was a difficult race and not an easy day, but the situation at the end with the rain saved it for me. Before that, I was struggling to progress through the field. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be, because I just couldn’t follow through the corners – I was getting big understeer.

I couldn’t carry the speed and get close enough to overtake, and other cars were finding it easier to follow closely. Then the rain arrived, I wanted to stop one lap earlier but the team wasn’t quite ready, but we were still one of the first cars to stop, which was good. I managed to climb up the order and score some good points, which is positive after a tricky day.”

Toto Wolff

“Those final few laps were so intense, but we managed to make the right calls and lead the field across the finish line. A big congratulations to Lewis on his 100th win. What we are witnessing is just mind-blowing. It’ll be talked about for the next few days, but it’ll only be years down the line when we realise that we’ve all been part of this journey. A journey no other driver in F1 history has done so far. That’s beyond race wins and championship victories, that is the very human part of all this.

In terms of the race, I think it would have been difficult to get past Norris in the dry, as Lewis struggled to overtake Ricciardo even with DRS. Norris managed the race very well, who knows what would have happened if the rain hadn’t arrived, but it did.

This kind of decision is hugely difficult, it started to drizzle on half of the circuit, but we made the call and it paid off. We’d made the call a little bit earlier with Valtteri, and that brought him into contention after a challenging race and he did a great job to move up the field and into the top five. A big well done to the entire team for all their work and efforts, it’s been a little while since we had a race victory but I know results like this will fire everyone up even more to keep pushing until the end of the season.”

Andrew Shovlin

“Congratulations to Lewis on his 100th win, it’s an incredible achievement and hopefully he can find time over the next few days to enjoy it. Obviously the end of the race was quite exciting, the team stayed calm and reacted well to the conditions and ultimately that’s what gave us the win.

Prior to the rain it was quite a tough race, Lewis lost places at the start after getting boxed in at turn 2 and Valtteri had a good start but struggled to make progress through the traffic, especially when stuck in a DRS train. We’d managed to get Lewis up to second and it would have been a straight fight with Lando in the dry but we were actually hoping for the rain as it felt like that would be our best chance of making it to the top step.

Valtteri was further back at the time it started so we decided to switch to intermediates early and that paid off, gaining some good points in the process. Overall, a solid team performance and it’s put us back in front in both championships so we’re happy with that but Max covered very well today from a PU penalty, finishing just one place behind, so we know we need to be at our very best in the coming races to have a chance of bringing the Championships home.”