Ferrari had displayed their best performance in this season with three consecutive victories since summer break. Formula 1 is back this weekend with racing at Sochi Autodrom, Russia. Sochi Autodrom is a 5.848 km street circuit in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi in Krasnodar Krai, built around Olympic Park. Mercedes holds the unique record of winning of all the races held so far since 2014 and Lewis Hamilton with the most number of wins at Sochi. Will Ferrari be able to break the Mercedes's reign at Russia?
The circuit is combination of high-speed straights and many 90-degrees turns. One of the iconic parts of the track is Turn 3 with 750 m constant radius left hander around the outside of the Poyushchiye fountain.
Practice 2
Red Bull looked the most impressive team based on a single lap pace at sector 1 and sector 3 and long runs in all the three sectors. However, the table may change overnight. McLaren(Sainz) also seemed to have impressive race pace in the mid-field.
Practice 2 - Timing Charts
Practice 2 - Tyre Charts
Practice 2 - Sector Charts
Practice 3
Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes had most of their testing concentrated on single lap pace. Ferrari had unleashed its potential in Practice 3 with blistering pace in Sector 1 and Sector 2. On the long run Renault seems to have improved overnight and there will be tough battle between Renault and McLaren.
Practice 3 - Timing Charts
Practice 3 - Tyre Charts
Practice 3 - Sector Charts
Main Race Heatmap
Mercedes continued their domination in Sochi by finishing P1 and P2. For the initial 25 laps of the race, it felt like Ferrari had their best chance of winning the race. However the MGU-K failure for Sebastian Vettel's SF90H followed safety incident by George Russel have changed the leaders in the table. Aside to that, the strategy opted by Mercedes to use medium compound as the starting tyres have helped them in a way by extending their first stint before pit stop.
Here is the race heat map for the 53 laps at Sochi.
Sector 1
Sector 2
Sector 3
References
The circuit map is taken from Wikipedia
